f some
half dozen illegitimate children, is a man's most irresistible passport,
and powerful recommendation to the good graces and smiles of the fair
sex at large; every woman is instantly eager to call into exercise that
fascinating treachery that ought to doom its possessor to public infamy
and detestation. The next most powerful introduction to female favor, is
to be a widower or a foreigner; though the latter is almost uniformly
"brought to bay," in a few months after marrying in this country, by a
wife and some eight or nine children from "over the water;" the very
next foreigner that comes over _alone_, is snapped up in the same
way--but enough of this.

He saw and admired Bianca, as Milton's devil saw and admired Paradise,
with the prospective determination of destroying its calm happiness
forever.

There was one of old Morelli's visitors, how ever, upon whom the lovely
Bianca's beauty, modesty and grace, had made an impression of a far
different kind. This was the young Count Altenberg, acknowledged on all
hands to be the most accomplished gentleman, and most amiable and
estimable young man, in that division of the Grand Duke's army. Frederic
Count Altenberg, was the son of Rudolf, of Altenberg, an officer of high
rank, who had served his country faithfully, but ineffectually, in
opposing the headlong progress of the blood-stained Corsican. The old
Count had, within two years, been gathered to his fathers, and his title
and estates had descended to his only son, then in his twenty-third
year. At an early age Frederic had received a commission as captain of
cavalry, but as every body knows that promotion is slower in the army of
his Tuscan highness than in that of any other European power, he still
remained a captain of cavalry, and probably would do so unto his dying
day. It was his determination, as soon as he returned to Florence, to
resign his commission, and retire to his paternal estates in Germany,
but "diis aliter visum est," the fates had decreed otherwise. An
indulgent and fond father had spared no pains nor expense in educating
this his only child, and that child had amply repaid his care.

Educated most carefully in the strictest principles of the Christian
religion and morality, generous, brave, and humane, he was, when he
arrived to man's estate, the _beau ideal_ of a man of honor, and a
gentleman. By neither of these terms, do I mean that fashionable
personage whose god is himself, who would sed