been before beneath the surface? Who can say when Louise d'Albany,
hitherto apparently so childish, became suddenly a woman with the first
terrible suspicion of the nature of the bondage into which she had been
sold? Such things are unromantic, unpoetical, coarse, common-place; yet
if the fears and the despair of a guiltless and charming girl have any
interest for us, the first whiff of brandy-tainted breath which met the
young wife in her husband's embraces, the first qualms and reekings
after dinner which came before her eyes, the first bestial and unquiet
drunkard's sleep which kept her awake in disgust and terror, these
things, vile though they be, are as tragic as any more ideal horrors. At
the beginning, most probably, Charles Edward drank only in the evening,
and slept off his drunkenness over-night; nor does Bonstetten appear to
have guessed that there was any skeleton in the palace at the Santissimi
Apostoli. But the spies of the English minister soon reported that
Charles Edward was returning to his old ways; that the "nasty bottle,"
as Cardinal York called it, had got the better of the young wife; and
when, two years after their marriage, the Count and Countess of Albany
had left Rome and settled in Florence, Charles Edward seems very soon to
have acquired in the latter place the dreadful notoriety which he had
long enjoyed in the former.

Circumstances also had conduced to replunge the Pretender into the
habits to which the renewed hope of political support, the novelty of
married life, and perhaps whatever of good may still have been conjured
up in his nature by the presence of a beautiful young wife, had
momentarily broken through. The French Government, after its sudden
pre-occupation about the future of the Stuarts, seemed to have
completely forgotten the existence of Charles Edward, except as regarded
the payment of the pension granted on his marriage. The child that had
been prepaid by that wedding pension, who was to rally the Jacobites
round a man whose claims must otherwise devolve legitimately in a few
years to the Hanoverian usurpers, the heir was not born, and, as month
went by after month, its final coming became less and less likely. Nor
was this all. Charles Edward seems to have expected that the sudden
interest taken by the Court of Versailles in his affairs, and his new
position as a married man and the possible father of a line of Stuarts,
would bring the obdurate sovereigns of Italy, and es