fterwards purchased by Count
Juliano, one of the most distinguished of the Florentine nobility.

With every personal advantage--youth, high station, and immense wealth,
he was married to one his equal in every respect, and might thus have
seemed an exception to the lot of humanity, his life realising, as it
were, every possible element of happiness. Still he was not happy; amid
all the voluptuous enjoyments of a life passed in successive pleasures,
the clouded brow and drooping eye told that some secret sorrow preyed
upon him, and that his gay doublet in all its bravery covered a sad and
sorrowing heart. His depression was generally attributed to the fact
that, although now married three years, no child had been born to their
union, or any likelihood that he should leave an heir to his great
name and fortune. Not even to his nearest friends, however, did any
confession admit this cause of sorrow; nor to the Countess, when herself
lamenting over her childless lot, did he seem to shew any participation
in the grief.

The love of solitude, the desire to escape from all society, and pass
hours, almost days, alone in a tower, the only admittance to which was
by a stair from his own chamber, had now grown upon him to that extent,
that his absence was regarded as a common occurrence by the guests of
the castle, nor even excited a passing notice from any one. If others
ceased to speculate on the Count's sorrow, and the daily aversion he
exhibited to mixing with the world, the Countess grew more and more
eager to discover the source. All her blandishments to win his secret
from him were, however, in vain; vague answers, evasive replies, or
direct refusals to be interrogated, were all that she met with, and the
subject was at length abandoned,--at least by these means.

Accident, however, disclosed what all her artifice had failed in--the
key of the secret passage to the tower, and which the Count never
entrusted to any one, fell from his pocket one day, when riding from the
door; the Countess eagerly seized it, and guessing at once to what it
belonged, hastened to the Count's chamber.

The surmise was soon found to be correct; in a few moments she had
entered the winding stairs, passing up which, she reached a small
octagon chamber at the summit of the tower. Scarcely had her eager eyes
been thrown around the room, when they fell upon a little bed, almost
concealed beneath a heavy canopy of silk, gorgeously embroidered with