re, and
at her mother's knee she learned her first lessons. The unhappy result
of poor young Caterina's education proved to Duke Cosimo that the
convent was no place for her, and, although he placed Alessandro's
illegitimate little daughters, Giulia and Porczia, with the good nuns,
he resolved that no such experience should be that of his own dear
children. The common saying, "The cow that is kept in the stall gives
the best milk" had for him a special significance!

Florentine children were noted for precocity and cruelty. Perhaps the
tragedy of Giacopo de' Pazzi, and the mauling of his mutilated body by
the street urchins, had left their marks on succeeding generations of
boys and girls. The most popular pastime was mimic warfare, wherein the
actualities of wounds and even deaths were common constituents. Every
dangerous sport was encouraged and, if by chance, or by intent, a boy
killed his rival, nobody cared and few lamented. The spirit of revenge
was openly cultivated, and cruelties of all kinds were not reprimanded.
Whether Cosimo's children shared in the general juvenile depravity, it
is impossible to say: they were, as they left the nursery, kept hard at
work with their lessons--Maria certainly, and probably Isabella, shared
the studies of their brothers. At first, Maestro Francesco Riccio, who
had been their father's tutor also, grounded them all in Greek, Latin,
grammar, music, and drawing; and then Maestro Antonio Angeli da Barga, a
scholar and writer of considerable merit, took them through the higher
subjects of composition, poetry, rhetoric, and geometry.

Foreign languages--at least French and Spanish--were not forgotten, for,
before Donna Maria was eight years old, she spoke the latter tongue with
fluency. The very learned Maestro Pietro Vettori, when he joined the
household of the Duke as teacher of Greek and philosophy to Don
Francesco, was greatly struck by the young girl's attainments, and so
charmed was he by her sprightly manner, that he obtained permission for
her to join her brother's lessons.

Donna Maria, before she was twelve, could read and quote Homer with
ease. She composed elegantly in Greek and Latin, and, possessed of a
remarkably sweet and sympathetic voice, she was able to recite from
memory, and even to expound her own juvenile opinions, both in Latin and
in Tuscan.

Cosimo and Eleanora inhabited the Medici Palace, in the Via Larga, just
five years, and then he transferred his of