d not do, what no human
being or accidental circumstances could bring about, was due to the
special nature of Alfieri and of the Countess; namely, that this strange
platonic passion, instead of dying out after a very brief time, merely
intensified, became long-lived, inextinguishable, nay continued, in its
absolute austerity and purity, long after every obstacle and restraint
had been removed, except the obstacles and restraints which, from the
very ideality of its own nature, increased for itself. And, if we look
facts calmly in the face, and, letting alone all poetical jargon, ask
ourselves the plain psychological explanation, we see that such things
not only could, but, considering the character of the Countess of Albany
and of Alfieri, must have been. The Countess had found in Alfieri the
satisfaction of those intellectual and ideal cravings which in a nature
like hers, and in a situation like hers, must have been the strongest
and most durable necessities. Alfieri, on the other hand, sick of his
past life, mortally afraid of falling once more under the tyranny of his
baser nature, seeking on all sides assistance in that terrible struggle
of the winged intellect out of the caterpillar cocoon in which it had
lain torpid so long, was wrought up, if ever a man was, to the pitch of
enjoying, of desiring a mere intellectual passion just in proportion as
it was absolutely and completely intellectual.

A poet especially in his conception of his own personality, an artist
who manipulated his own nature, a _poseur_ whose _pose_ was his
concentrated self cleared of all things which recalled the vulgar herd;
moreover, a furiously literary temper with a mad devotion to Dante and
Petrarch: Alfieri must have found in this love, which fate in the
Pretender's person ordained to be platonic, the crowning characteristic
of his present personality, the almost miraculous confirmation of his
mystic relationship to the lover of Beatrice and the lover of Laura.
And, in the knowledge of what he was to this poor, tormented young
wife; in the consciousness of being the only ray of light in this
close-shuttered prison--nay, rather bedlam-like existence; in the sense
of how completely the happiness of Louise d'Albany depended upon
him, whatever there was of generous and dutiful in the selfish and
self-willed nature of Alfieri must have become paramount, and enjoined
upon him never to vacillate or grow weary in this strange mixture of
love and