er who ever poured
thick-voiced flatteries into a girl-wife's ears, there were others,
plenty of them, who were eager to pay more acceptable homage to her; and
these men--poets, courtiers, great men in art and letters--flocked to
her _salon_ to bask in her beauty and to be charmed by her wit.

After all, she was a Queen, although she wore no crown. She had a Court,
although no Royalties graced it. From the Pope to the King of France, no
monarch in Europe would recognise her husband's kingship. But at such
neglect, the offspring of jealousy, of course, she only smiled. She
could indeed have been moderately happy in her girlish, light-hearted
way, if her husband had not been such an impossible person.

As for Charles Edward, he soon wearied of a bride who did nothing but
laugh at him, and who was so ready to escape from his obnoxious presence
to the company of more congenial admirers. He returned to his brandy
bottle, and alternated between a fuddled brain and moods of wild
jealousy. He would not allow his wife to leave the door without his
escort; if she refused to accompany him, he turned the key in her
bedroom door, to which the only access was through his own room.

He took her occasionally to the theatre or opera, his brandy bottle
always making a third for company. Before the performance was half
through he was snoring stertorously on the couch which he insisted on
having in his box; and, more often than not, was borne to his carriage
for the journey home helplessly drunk. And this within the first year of
his wedded life.

If any woman had excuse for seeking elsewhere the love she could not
find in her husband it was Louise of Albany. There were dames in plenty
in Rome (where they were now living) who, not content with devoted
husbands, had their _cisibeos_ to play the lover to them; but Louise
sought no such questionable escape from her unhappiness. Her books and
the clever men who thronged her _salon_ were all the solace she asked;
and under temptation such as few women of that country and day would
have resisted, she carried the shield of a blameless life.

From Rome the Countess and her husband fared to Florence in 1774; and
here matters went from bad to worse. Charles was now seldom sober day
or night; and his jealousy often found expression in filthy abuse and
cowardly assaults. Hitherto he had been simply disgusting; now he was a
constant menace, even to her life. She lived in hourly fear of his
brutali