The marriage contract was prepared on the 15th of September, 1542 in Milan by Galeazzo Visconti and Gerolamo Bertobio, notaries, in the presence of Francesco Guiducci and Giuseppe Girlandoni, representative of Cardinal Innocent Cybo (the same to whom Philip Strozzi bequeathed his blood to be made into a pudding) and of Lorenzo and Ricciarda Cybo, on the one side, and Paolo Pansa the attorney of Count Fieschi on the other. The dower amounted to hardly nine thousand gold crowns of the sun and two thousand more for the wedding outfit. The Strozzi papers contain an act under date of January 18th 1543 written by Bernardo Usodimare-Granello, scribe of the archepiscopal court of Genoa, by which Count Gianluigi acknowledges that Rev. Ambrogio Calvi, attorney and agent of Cybo, had paid four thousand gold crowns of the sun and deposited five thousand more with the brothers Giuliano and Agostino Salvaghi who had become securities for the dowry. The act further acknowledged the payment of one thousand crowns for jewellery and ornaments and provides that the other should be furnished by Cybo in silver, gold and gems. In the same act, Count Fieschi pledged as security for the dowry the castle of Cariseto and its appurtenances, which he had obtained by purchase, and he promised to obtain the consent of Cæsar to the transfer of the estate within one year from the date of the instrument. The preparations for the wedding and the festivities connected with the espousals were on a splendid scale. The flower of the Genoese nobility came to congratulate the spouses at their residence in Vialata. Two powerful families possessed the magnificent hill of Carignano, the Fieschi, and the Sauli. Each family had there a splendid palace. During the minority of Gianluigi, silence had reigned in his, while that of the Sauli had been greatly enlarged and embellished. The Sauli were new nobles belonging to the popular party, like the Fieschi, Farnari, Promontori and Giustiniani; yet few of the nobility, old or new, equalled them in wealth and gentility of blood. Marcantonio Sauli, a grave priest, whose life Soprani wrote, had splendidly adorned his palace, and there the Genoese ladies were wont to meet for pleasure, and the elders of the city to debate on the affairs of the Republic. At the marriage of Gianluigi, his palace resumed its ancient gaiety, and the Sauli, surpassed by the Fieschi in magnificence, were filled with envy; and this was the first cause of those differences and rivalries which separated these distinguished families.