It occurred three days later at Urbino, when the Duke and Valentina were brought together at the banquet of welcome given by Guidobaldo to his intended nephew-in-law.

The sight of her resplendent beauty came as a joyful shock to Gian Maria, and filled him with as much impatience to possess her as did his own gross ugliness render him offensive in her eyes.
Averse had she been to this wedding from the moment that it had been broached to her.

The sight of Gian Maria completed her loathing of the part assigned her, and in her heart she registered a vow that sooner than become the Duchess of Babbiano, she would return to her Convent of Santa Sofia and take the veil.
Gian Maria sat beside her at the banquet, and in the intervals of eating--which absorbed him mightily--he whispered compliments at which she shuddered and turned pale.

The more strenuously did he strive to please, in his gross and clumsy fashion, the more did he succeed in repelling and disgusting her, until, in the end, with all his fatuousness, he came to deem her oddly cold.

Of this, anon, he made complaint to that magnificent prince, her uncle.