SENZA RIMPROVERI.

 On a balcony in the great room upstairs dined the women of a certain age, among them was your mother-in-law Monna Antonia, and like her were about forty others in the company of Monna Lucrezia. In short, at the principal tables dined about two hundred.  The banquets were prepared for a marriage rather than for a magnificent feast, and I think this was done de iiidustria as an example to others not to exceed the modesty and simplicity suitable to marriages, so there was never more than one roast.  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. 

The bride has received about fifty rings, costing they say from ten to fifty or sixty ducats each ; one piece of brocade ; a sweetmeat dish of silver, and many other such things ; and a small book of the offices of Our Lady, most beautiful, the 1 written in letters of on blue gold of vellum and covered with crystal and worked silver, which cost about two hundred florins. On Tuesday the bride left (a tournament was held first), and returned to the house of the Alessandri in the same dress in which she came to be married. This was a robe of white and gold brocade and a magnificent hood on her head, as is used here. She rode the same horse and was accompanied by the same youths, whose rich dresses of silver brocade embroidered with large pearls and jewels baffle description. From what they tell of courts of great princes nothing was ever seen like it save certain jewels of great value worn by some great Lords. Of the women I say nothing ! 

Such jackets and robes of silk, all of them embroidered with pearls. I rather blame than praise this height of civilisation. And thus ended this marriage. One day it rained ; on the Monday, just when the feast was at its highest. It seemed as though done on purpose. It en- veloped everything and wet the beautiful dresses, for the rain was so sudden and so heavy that many could not get under shelter soon enough. But the youths and the women had not put on the finest clothes which they had reserved for that day, the most important of the feast, so that to many it seemed their money had been spent in vain, not being able to wear them.