After the birth of three children Cosimo III considered the succession to be secure and occupied himself no more with his wife. “He obliged the Grand Duchess,” writes Martinelli, “to send the French cavaliers and ladies of her court back to France, only a cook was allowed to remain.” Cosimo, entirely given up to devotion and solitude, governed his family as well as his dominions like Tiberius. He only permitted his wife to indulge in the amusement of a concert for two or three hours in the evening.... The Grand Duchess was young and found the concert tiresome, or else being born in France she did not care for Italian music, so she used to call for the cook who appeared in his white apron and cap. This cook was, or pretended to be, extremely ticklish, and the Princess knowing this took great pleasure in tickling him, while he made all those contortions, screams and exclamations of one who cannot bear to be tickled. Thus the Princess pursuing, and the cook defending himself and running from one end of the room to the other, caused her to laugh immoderately, and at last when tired she would seize a pillow from off her bed and beat the cook with it over the head and about the body while he shouted and begged for mercy, and got first under and then on the bed of the Princess, who continued to beat him, until tired out with laughing and beating she would sink down on a chair. While these games were going on between the Grand Duchess and her cook the musicians ceased playing and rested until she sat down. For a long time the Grand Duke knew nothing of what went on, but one evening the cook being very drunk shouted louder than usual, so that Cosimo, whose rooms were at some distance from those of the Grand Duchess, heard the extraordinary noise. When he entered his wife’s apartments she was beating the cook on the Grand Ducal bed. Horror-struck the Prince condemned the cook to the galleys, but I believe he was eventually pardoned, and read his wife such a lecture that she declared she would return to France....[8] She went to Poggio a Cajano and her children, dressed in deep mourning, were sent to bid her good-bye. Touched by their tears she determined to ask her husband’s pardon and his permission to return to Florence; but this was refused, and after spending some months in solitude at the villa the Princess left for Paris, where she died in September 1721 at the age of seventy-six, having spent her life in love and intrigue. The son of Cosimo III, by this eccentric lady, made a bad husband to the pretty and amiable Violante of Bavaria. He passed most of his time at Poggio a Cajano with musicians and actors, and followed a young Venetian singer, Vittoria Bombagia, to Venice for the carnival, whence he returned desperately ill and soon afterwards died.