England to Egypt. But she so
arranged her movements that she always contrived to spend the summer in
Ancona and the autumn in Rome.

In due course the latter town, like the former, had become Italian; but
in Rome, as well as in Ancona, she continued to display a kind of proud
contempt for the governing faction, and particularly for those members
of it who tried, by every possible artifice, to gain the heart of a
lady at once so rich and so handsome. It was rumoured, indeed, that
some of the younger noblemen had entered into a sort of agreement to
either conquer her or crush her; and whether there was any truth in the
story or not, she certainly believed in it herself. The revenge she
took upon those whom she suspected of designs upon her was to bring
them to her feet by her fascinations, and then to repulse them
scornfully; to render them frantic, first with hope, afterwards with
disappointment. When she appeared on the Corso and Monte Pincio,
driving her own horses, it was in a sort of triumphal progress, with
her captives bound, as it were, to her chariot wheels. If this was not
obvious to the general public, she herself was fully conscious of it,
and so, indeed, were her victims. She would have been killed, or have
met with a fate worse than death itself, but for the protection of a
group of staunch admirers, who formed a faithful and adoring body-guard
round her. Among these worshippers was the poet whose verses have
already been quoted. In Ancona, more particularly, the young officers
of the garrison either sighed for her in secret, or regarded her with
unconcealed dislike.

At the very time when Giuseppe Mansana's regiment had been ordered to
Ancona, she had hit upon a new caprice. She absolutely declined to take
part in the fashionable gathering which, every evening, was in the
habit of assembling and promenading in the Corso. Here, under the light
of the moon and stars and lamps, ladies were to be seen in evening
toilettes, their faces half-hidden behind those fans they manipulated
so dexterously; gentlemen in uniform, or dressed in the last new summer
fashion, strolled up and down, exchanging greetings and jests,
gathering about the tables where their friends sat eating ices or
drinking coffee, passing from one to the other, and finally settling
down into their seats, when a quartette party began to sing, or some
band of wandering musicians to play, with zither, flute, and guitar. In
this function Theresa Le