n earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He
pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my
heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the
palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess
regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and
there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather.
It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which
looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or
night.

"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed
all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day
a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my
assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own,
when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer
to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the
alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more
than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name.
But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please
him.

"Day and night I exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the
princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however
wrong it was. But my labour was to no purpose, for she was in love
herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most
accomplished and valiant gentleman, who had come into Scotland with a
younger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite
with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestowed on
him titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords
of the land.

"Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to all I said
in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my
recommendation; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success,
his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little
as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect
of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient,
which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He
pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in
his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in
reality; and, in order to indulge this whi