Whilst boys and young men in Florence were free to come and go as they
liked, and to mix with all sorts and conditions of men and women, the
case was precisely the opposite for girls. Very especially severe were
the restrictions imposed upon the growing daughters of the Duchess
Eleanora. Brought up amid all the austerity and fanaticism of the
Spanish Court, Eleanora de Toledo viewed woman's early life from the
conventual point of view.

Jealous of her children's honour, she fenced her three daughters around
with precautions which rendered their lives irksome to themselves and
troublesome to all who were about them. Maria and her younger sisters
were literally shut up within the narrow limits of the apartments they
occupied in the palace--happily for them it was not the Palazzo Vecchio
but the more roomy Pitti, with its lovely Boboli Gardens.

With carefully chosen attendants and teachers, their lives were entirely
absorbed by religious exercises, studies, and needlework. Rarely were
they seen at Court functions, and rarer still in the city. If they were
allowed a day's liberty in the country, they were jealously guarded, and
every attempt at recognition and salutation, of such as they chanced to
meet, was rigorously checked.

Beyond association with their brothers, and anxiously watched
intercourse with the members of the Ducal suite, their knowledge of the
sterner sex was absolutely wanting. It was in vain that Cosimo
expostulated with his consort; she was inexorable, and, indeed, she
stretched her system so far as to exclude the ladies of the Court.
Perhaps she was right in this, for the Duke himself was the daily object
of her watchfulness!

Cosimo was wont to meet her restrictions by some such remark as "Well,
you see, Eleanora, Maria and Isabella are of the same complexion as
myself; we have need of freedom at times to enjoy the pleasures of the
world."

Love, we all know, cares neither for locks nor bars, and lovely young
Maria de' Medici was surely made to love and to caress. She had many
adorers, whose ardour was all the more fierce by reason of their
inability to press her hand and kiss her lips. She was in 1556
betrothed to Prince Alfonso d'Este, eldest son of the Duke of Ferrara.
He was certainly not in the category of lovers, even at sight, for he
had never seen his bride to be. That was an entirely unimportant
incident in matrimonial arrangements. The union was projected entirely
for political reason