or effort, unconscious "like a bird," says the
Countess, give up the ghost. It was between nine and ten of the morning
of the 9th October 1803. Vittorio Alfieri was in his fifty-fifth year.

The Abate di Caluso, the greatest friend he had, after Gori, was
summoned from Turin to console the Countess and put all papers in order.
Alfieri's will, made out in 1799, left all his books and MSS., and
whatever small property he possessed, to the Countess Louise d'Albany,
leaving her to dispose of them entirely according to her good pleasure.
Among these papers was found a short letter, undated, addressed "To the
friend I have left behind, Tommaso di Caluso, at Turin," and which ran
as follows:--

"As I may any day give way beneath the very serious malady which is
consuming me, I have thought it wise to prepare these few lines in order
that they may be given to you as a proof that you have always, to my
last moment, been present to my mind and very dear to my heart. The
person whom above everything in the world I have most respected and
loved, may some day tell you all the circumstances of my illness. I
supplicate and conjure you to do your best to see and console her, and
to concert with her the various measures which I have begged her to
carry out with regard to my writings.

"I will not give you more pain, at present, by saying any more. I have
known in you one of the most rare men in every respect. I die loving and
esteeming you, and valuing myself for your friendship if I have deserved
it. Farewell, farewell."

CHAPTER XVIII.

FABRE.

"Happiness has disappeared out of the world for me," wrote Mme. d'Albany,
in January 1804, to her old friend Canon Luti, at Siena. "I take
interest in nothing; the world might be completely upset without my
noticing it. I read a little, and reading is the only thing which gives
me any courage, a merely artificial courage; for when I return to my
own thoughts and think of all that I have lost, I burst into tears and
call Death to my assistance, but Death will not come. O God! what a
misfortune to lose a person whom one adores and venerates at the same
time. I think that if I still had Therese (Mme. Mocenni) it would
be some consolation; but there is no consolation for me. I have the
strength to hide my feelings before the world, for no one could conceive
my misfortune who has not felt it. A twenty-six years' friendship with
so perfect a being, and then to see him taken away from m