kept about her head to fall on her
shoulders, thus giving her face to view, and exhibiting in it a lustre
equal to that of the moon, rather of the sun itself, when displayed in
all its splendour. Liquid pearls fell from her eyes, which she
endeavoured to dry with a kerchief of extraordinary delicacy, and with
hands so white that he must have had much judgment in colour who could
have found a difference between them and the cambric. Finally, after
many a sigh and many an effort to calm herself, with a feeble and
trembling voice, she said--

"I, Signors, am she of whom you have doubtless heard mention in this
city, since, such as it is, there are few tongues that do not publish
the fame of my beauty. I am Cornelia Bentivoglio, sister of Lorenzo
Bentivoglio; and, in saying this, I have perhaps affirmed two
acknowledged truths,--the one my nobility, and the other my beauty. At a
very early age I was left an orphan to the care of my brother, who was
most sedulous in watching over me, even from my childhood, although he
reposed more confidence in my sentiments of honour than in the guards he
had placed around me. In short, kept thus between walls and in perfect
solitude, having no other company than that of my attendants, I grew to
womanhood, and with me grew the reputation of my loveliness, bruited
abroad by the servants of my house, and by such as had been admitted to
my privacy, as also by a portrait which my brother had caused to be
taken by a famous painter, to the end, as he said, that the world might
not be wholly deprived of my features, in the event of my being early
summoned by Heaven to a better life.

"All this might have ended well, had it not chanced that the Duke of
Ferrara consented to act as sponsor at the nuptials of one of my
cousins; when my brother permitted me to be present at the ceremony,
that we might do the greater honour to our kinswoman. There I saw and
was seen; there, as I believe, hearts were subjugated, and the will of
the beholders rendered subservient; there I felt the pleasure received
from praise, even when bestowed by flattering tongues; and, finally, I
there beheld the duke, and was seen by him; in a word, it is in
consequence of this meeting that you see me here.

"I will not relate to you, Signors (for that would needlessly protract
my story), the various stratagems and contrivances by which the duke and
myself, at the end of two years, were at length enabled to bring about
that unio