Catherine was born on a rainy April morning in 1519 in the Medici palace in the via larga in Florence at a time when her young father, Lorenzo, was dying of tuberculosis.
Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, Catherine's lovely young French mother, died when her little daughter was twelve days old, and Lorenzo a fortnight later, so before she was a month old, Catherine de Medici was an orphan. Naturally, it meant nothing to the baby that one day she would be queen and regent of one of the greatest nations of the world, that she would be the mother of three kings, two queens, a sovereign duke and a reigning duchess.
Her first six years were spent in Rome, doubtless under the watchful eye of her uncle, Pope Leo X. Then she was brought back to Florence to live for a time with her aunt and uncle, Filippo Strozzi, one of the wealthiest nobles of the city. But it was a time of great political unrest in Florence. Catherine's cousin, Ippolito, a great favorite with the Pope,
had teen made il Magnifico and given all the power that title entailed.
The year 1527 was a disastrous one for the Medici family. Emperor Charles V of Germany, who was also King of Spain, stormed Rome; in Florence the Italian people rose in bitter protest against Ippolito's highhanded methods as head of the Medici. The very name Medici became anathema and grizzly outrages were perpetrated against bearers of it in the name of justice. Little Catherine had been in hiding in a nearby villa. Now she was brought into the city once more and put into the care of the Dominican nuns in the convent of Santa Lucia. A few months later she was transferred to the convent of Santa Caterina of Siena, then to the convent of Santissima Annunziata delle Murate. In 1528 when her aunt died, the nine-year-old child realized with a sinking heart that, though comparatively safe in the convent, she was alone in a city filled with enemies of her House.
Many of the nuns were faithful adherents of the House of Medici and were discovered by the victorious enemy to have carried food to Medici prisoners. To the horror of the good women, they learned that cruel reprisals were to be meted out upon their little charge, so again she was spirited away to the convent of Santa Lucia. Bewildered, certain of nothing but that, in spite of the great deference shown her, she was a refugee, Catherine kept her own counsel and tried to adjust to the routine of Santa Lucia.
Her uncle, Pope Leo X, had died and had been succeeded by her grandfather s cousin, Pope Clement VII, and he now ordered the little Duchessina to be brought to Rome to live
with her aunt, Lucretia Salviati He could not permit so enormously rich a young kinswoman to live so far removed from his surveillance. Rome seemed the proper place for her. He and Francis I of France had been negotiating since Catherine was six years old for a marriage between her and the King's second son, Prince Henry, Duke of Orleans.
The Venetian ambassador writing of Catherine in 1532 when she was thirteen, said, "The little Duchess is of a rather vivacious nature but shows an amiable disposition. . * . She is small and thin, her face Is not refined, and she has the big eyes which belong to the family of the Medici/' One wonders what the ambassador meant by her face not being "refined/' Possibly the heavy Medici lips offended him. In later life Catherine was often described as "magnifi-
]g Dark Eminence
cent/' "superb," and "impressive/* but never as beautiful, so probably even in early childhood she was not pretty.
Plans for her marriage to the Duke of Orleans had been progressing slowly, for the dowry demanded by the King of France was unreasonable and the sum finally settled upon, after much haggling, was far less than France had been led to expect. By August, 1533, however, the royal trousseau was well under way. On September second Catherine gave a farewell banquet to the ladies of Florence at the Medici palace and received from them hangings for her apartments made of cloth of gold embroidered with pearls. Considering the price of one fine pearl and one ell of cloth of gold, the gift, one must judge, was priceless.
Touched more than she dared admit even to herself, Catherine made her formal speech of thanks while her throat ached and her eyes Warred. Then her gentlemen lifted her up on her prancing, richly caparisoned hackney and she rode out under the ancient arches of Florence for the last time. The night was spent at Poggio a Caiano, then, escorted by relatives among the Florentine nobility, she continued on her way to Spezia where she was met by her uncle, the Duke of Albany, with a fleet of sixty ships.
She embarked on the royal galley, a magnificent craft built at fantastic cost. As one historian describes it:* "The state salon extended from the mainmast to the rudder, covered with the richest crimson damask strewn with golden lilies trailing down profusely in long folds almost
