ty; but in her darkest hour sunshine came again into her life
with the coming of Vittorio Alfieri, whose name was to be linked with
hers for so many years.

At this time Alfieri was in the very prime of his splendid manhood, one
of the handsomest and most fascinating men in all Europe. Some four
years older than herself, he was a tall, stalwart, soldierly man,
blue-eyed and auburn-haired, an aristocrat to his finger-tips, a daring
horseman, a poet, and a man of rare culture--just the man to set any
woman's heart a-flutter, as he had already done in most of the capitals
of the Continent.

He was a spoilt child of fortune, this Italian poet and soldier, a man
who had drunk deep of the cup of life, and to whom all conquests came
with such fatal ease that already he had drained life dry of its
pleasures.

Such was the man who one autumn day in the year 1777 came into the
unhappy life of the Countess of Albany, still full of the passions and
yearnings of youth. It was surely fate that thus brought together these
two young people of kindred tastes and kindred disillusions; and we
cannot wonder that, of that first meeting, Alfieri should write, "At
last I had met the one woman whom I had sought so long, the woman who
could inspire my ambition and my work. Recognising this, and prizing so
rare a treasure, I gave myself up wholly to her."

Those were happy days for the Countess that followed this fateful
meeting--days of sweet communion of twin souls, hours of stolen bliss,
when they could dwell apart in a region of high and ennobling thoughts,
while the besotted husband was sleeping off the effects of his drunken
orgies in the next room. To Alfieri, Louise was indeed "the anchor of
his life," giving stability to his vacillating nature, and inspiring all
that was best and noblest in him; while to her the association with this
"splendid creature," who so thoroughly understood and sympathised with
her, was the revelation of a new world.

Thus three happy years passed; and then the crisis came. One night the
Prince, in a mood of drunken madness, inflamed by jealousy, attacked his
wife, and, after severely beating her, flung her down on her bed and
attempted to strangle her. This was the crowning outrage of years of
brutality. She could not, dared not, spend another day with such a
madman. At any cost she must leave him--and for ever.

When morning came, with Alfieri's assistance, the plan of escape was
arranged. In the compa