luded there is a letter
to the British Envoy at Florence, in which a reference is thus made
to an incident in my story. Shall I own that without this historic
allusion, I would scarcely have detained my reader by what is, after
all, a mere episodical passage in the tale? Seymour writes--'So far as
I can learn, the woman arrested under this charge of sorcery is not
a British subject at all, as I at first informed you, although great
reason exists to believe her to be a spy in the Jacobite cause. All
my efforts to obtain a sight of her have also failed; nor can I even
ascertain where it is they have confined her. The common story goes,
that she has bewitched the young Chevalier of whom they want to make a
Prince of the House of Stewart, and thus entirely spoiled the game
the Jesuits were plotting. Vulgar rumour adds the enormous rewards
she demands for disenchanting him and so forth; but more trustworthy
accounts suggest that all her especial subtlety will be needed to effect
her own escape. That she possesses boundless wealth, and is of peerless
beauty, a miracle of learning and accomplishment, you are, of course,
prepared to hear. Would that I were enabled to add my own humble
testimony on any of these points. Neither Alberoni nor Casali have seen
her, so that you may easily imagine how hopeless are my chances.

'It is very hard to believe these things in our age; but so they are,
and this morning I was told that the "Prince," pardon me the title, has
been so much advantaged by her visit, that he has thrown off all his old
melancholy, and goes about gay and happy. Of this I cannot pronounce,
for his Royal Highness has gone down to Caraffa's villa at Orvieto, by
way of recovering his health completely, and lives there in the very
strictest seclusion.

'The affair has so many aspects, that in some one or other of them it
has occupied all Rome during the last five or six weeks, and we go about
asking each other will the Prince marry Guglia Ridolfi, Caraffa's niece?
Will he ever be King of England? When will they crown _him_? When will
they burn the witch? Of the latter event, if it show signs of occurring,
I am to give due tidings beforehand to our friend Horatio, who, gout
permitting, would come out from England to see the ceremony.

'It is my belief that Mr. Pitt would put this female to more profitable
use than by making a fagot of her, if she had but half what the world
alleges in craft and acuteness. Priests, howeve