No sideboards had been placed for the silver. Only tall tables in the middle of the courtyard, round that handsome column on which stands the David,[133] covered with tablecloths, and at the four corners were four great copper basins for the glasses, and behind the tables stood men to hand wine or water to those who served the guests. The same arrangement was made in the garden round the fountain you know. On the tables were silver vessels in which the glasses were put to be kept cool. The salt-cellars, forks, knife-handles, bowls for the fritters, almonds, sugar-plums, and the jars for preserved pine-seeds were of silver; there was none other for the guests save the basins and jugs for washing of hands. The tablecloths were of the finest white damask linen[134] laid according to our fashion. About four hundred citizens were invited to these five banquets, and among them the first of your house was your Lorenzo, and then Agnolo and Lodovico; I was also there. On Monday morning to all who had received veal, jelly was given, and then about 1500 trenchers full were presented to others. Many religious [monks and nuns] also received gifts of fowls, fish, sweetmeats, wine, and similar things. After the guests at the first tables had finished many hundreds ate. They say that between the house here and that of Messer Carlo[135] more than a thousand people ate, and at Messer Carlo’s every day one hundred barrels of wine were drunk. In the house here, where the marriage feast was, every respectable person who came in was at once taken to the ground-floor hall, out of the large loggia, to refresh himself with fruit, sweetmeats, and white and red wine. The common folk were not invited. The feasting began in the morning a little before dinner-time, then every one went away to repose. At about the twentieth hour (4 o’clock) they returned and danced until supper-time on the stage outside, which was decorated with tapestries, benches, and forms, and covered in with large curtains of purple, green, and white cloth, embroidered with the arms of the Medici and the Orsini. Every time a company came on to the stage to dance they took refreshments once or twice, according to the time. First came the trumpeters, then a great silver basin, then many smaller ones full of glasses, then small silver jars full of water, then many flasks of trebbiano and then twenty-three silver bowls full of preserved pine-seeds and sweet conserves. To all was given in abundance and all the dishes were emptied; and the same with the flasks of wine. The account has not been made, but from five to ... thousand pounds of sweetmeats and sugar-plums were consumed.