Page 193 - The Grotesque Children's Book

poetry, cleaning floors (she loved the broom for heaven's sake). Doing things ourselves our own
way, she chirruped, though he was a little concerned about her violent response whenever he
started to read a psalm. Pietro: “Yea, though I walk through the --” Bianca: (screams, hides
under the bed, and while she's under there, cleans some dirt). So, yes, fifteen-year-old Bianca
Buonaventuri, in spite of having neither money nor influence, or fancy clothes, or a cultured
mother-in-law, Bianca was, for the first time her life, happy.

Except she didn't love Pietro.

She tolerated him. She didn't mind him. The fact that he hadn't even a hint of a goiter
was alone enough for her to be content with him. So the trouble started when she first saw the
young Grand Prince Francesco de’ Medici, and she felt something inside her physical heart
pump her blood faster through her arteries. She literally swooned when she first saw him for the
blood rushed to her head and she had to sit down.

Sadly for poor Pietro, the same rush of blood happened for Francesco at the same instant,
when he first saw her in the Buonaventuri's window overlooking the Piazza San Marco (although
his blood's rushing was not all confined to his head, if you take the meaning). Francesco wasn't
yet a duke, but he would be, just as soon as his father, Cosimo de’ Medici, breathed his last.
Francesco had been headed to his usual “casino di delizie” (house of delights -- a euphemism for
brothel), when he saw Bianca, and like an iron needle swinging wildly when it finds True North,
so did Francesco de’ Medici find true love in Bianca, and he meant to have her.

Now, Francesco was already married to Joanna of Austria (who was the daughter of the
Emperor; unlike Bianca, Francesco honored his financial obligations to his family; “marry rich
and subsume”), but that didn't stop him from attempting to seduce the woman he saw in the
window. Francesco felt from the very first day he saw her that Bianca was different from Joanna
and indeed all the whores in his life; Bianca would remain, from that first glimpse to their final
hours together at Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano, a cherished and precious swan, to be
protected and respected. This is the truth. You can read other accounts which paint Francesco as
a villain and Bianca as a conniving opportunist, but the actuality was, they deeply cared for each
other and were astonished to have found one another in a world which was not typically
nurturing of kindness and caring. Francesco began his courtship of Bianca by sending her --

(But first -- You are wondering “what about poor Pietro? Didn't he love Bianca? Wasn't
he, too, to be rewarded for his kindnesses? And Joanna of Austria as well,” though perhaps you
are less engaged in Joanna’s fate as Pietro's, for you know little more of her than her name and
country of origin. But still, you are capable of a certain amount of empathy even for strangers,
and you worry for Joanna if the soon-to-be Duke has fallen in love with another woman? Alas.
Pietro was murdered on the Bridge of the Della Ininita in Florence some eight years later in
1572, and Joanna was murdered six years after that. So in this case, you might be tempted to rail
at Fate that once again it is only the rich and powerful who reap rewards in this unfair universe!
But you would be premature in your railing, as you will realize when you recall that Francesco
and Bianca were both of them also murdered. Yes, that's all four of them killed in their prime, so
if you're looking for some kind of assurance in the general morality and fairness of the universe,

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