f Mme. d'Albany for refusing to sacrifice their happiness to the
proprieties of a society which married girls of nineteen to drunkards
whom they had never seen, but which would not hear of divorce; this
punishment, falling directly only upon the man, but probably just as
heavy upon the woman who witnessed the humiliation of the person whom
she most loved and respected, consisted in turning Alfieri, the man who
was training Italy to be self-respecting, truthful, unflinching, into a
toady, a liar, and an intriguer.

The Countess of Albany, living in the palace of her brother-in-law,
Cardinal York, and under the special protection of the Pope, was
entirely dependent on the good pleasure of the priestly bureaucracy of
the Rome of Pius VI., that is to say, of about the most contemptible
and vilest set of fools and hypocrites and sinners that can well be
conceived; the Papacy, just before the Revolution, had become one of the
most corrupt of the many corrupt Governments of the day. Cardinal York
himself was a weak and silly, but honest and kind-hearted man; but
Cardinal York was entirely swayed by the prelates and priests and
priestlets and semi-priestly semi-lay nondescripts among whom he lived.
He was responsible for the honour of the Countess of Albany, that is to
say, of her husband and his brother; and the honour of the Countess of
Albany depended exactly upon the remarks which the most depraved and
hypocritical clergy in Europe, the people who did or abetted all the
dirty work of Pius VI. and his Sacred College, chose to make or not to
make about her conduct.

Such were the persons upon whom depended the liberty and happiness of
Alfieri's lady, the possibility of that high-flown Platonic intercourse
which constituted Louis d'Albany's whole happiness, and Alfieri's
strongest incentive to glory; a word from them could exile Alfieri and
lock the Countess up in a convent. The consequence of this state of
things is humiliating to relate, since it shows to what baseness the
most high-minded among us may be forced to degrade themselves. Already,
during those few days' sojourn in Rome, before his stay in Naples and
Mme. d'Albany's release from the Ursuline convent, Alfieri had spent his
time running about flattering and wheedling the powers in command (that
is to say, the corrupt ministers of the Papacy and their retinue of
minions and spies), in order to obtain leave to inhabit the same city as
his beloved and to see her from