It is difficult to understand all this excessive avidity of toad–eating servility and flunkeyism in such a body as the Venetian senate. But a few months previously they had manifested a very different tone of feeling on the subject of Bianca's connection with the Grand Duke, superior alike to any sentiments to be found among the Florentine nobles, and to these their own subsequent acts. For we read in a MS. chronicle of the time by Francesco Molino, cited by Cigogna,[189] that Bartolommeo Cappello, her father, having purchased the magnificent palace De' Trivigiani with money received from his daughter, was so ill–looked on in Venice in consequence, that he was solely on this account excluded from the senate; "inasmuch as it was thought that the connection of that family with the Prince Francesco arose from a base and disgraceful cause; and that though it might be profitable, and might, perhaps, be deemed honourable for others, it was not so for a Venetian gentleman." That last touch of republican pride is magnificent; and it is a pity that any reasons of policy, or other motive of any kind, should have induced the senate to exhibit itself so lamentably false to all such generous feeling so shortly afterwards. Francesco was exceedingly delighted at the abundant success of his embassy to Venice. Bianca now was—no, not _was_ exactly—but might be supposed to seem to be, no longer a private individual, but a princess, as being the daughter of a sovereign state. By metaphor, fiction, parchment, and herald's trumpeting, Bianca was now a princess, of due rank to mate with a sovereign duke; and Francesco accordingly announced to the various courts on the 20th of June his forthcoming marriage with a daughter of the republic of Venice. The ceremony was fixed for the 12th of October, 1579; and immense preparations were made to celebrate it with unusual pomp and splendour. [Sidenote: VENETIAN EMBASSY TO FLORENCE.] Meanwhile the Grand Duke sent his natural brother, Don Giovanni, a boy of twelve years old, with a numerous train, to bear his thanks to the Republic for the honours conferred on his bride. He was received by eight–and–twenty Venetian gentlemen at the frontier, and by forty senators outside the city, by whom he was processionally conducted to the Casa Cappello, where Vittorio, Bianca's brother, was charged by the senate to entertain him at the expense of the state, which granted an unlimited credit for that purpose. Under these circumstances it may be safely conjectured that the boy ambassador was received with such holiday keeping, as left on his mind no mean impressions of Venetian hospitality and magnificence.