d to him the command of the
morrow's battle, "Be thine the secret hill to-night," referring to the
Gaelic custom of the commander of an army retiring to a secret hill
the night before a battle to hold communion with the ghosts of
departed heroes. But, as it has been often remarked of secrets--both
political and social--they are only too frequently made to be
revealed, a truth illustrative of Ben Jonson's words in "The Case is
Unaltered "--

A secret in his mouth
Is like a wild bird put into a cage,
Whose door no sooner opens but 'tis out.

In family history, some of the strangest secrets have related to
concealment of birth, many a fraud having been devised to alter or
perpetuate the line of issue. Early in the present century, a romantic
story which was the subject of conversation in the circles both of
London and Paris, related to Lady Newborough, who had always
considered herself the daughter of Lorenzo Chiappini, formerly gaoler
of Modigliana, and subsequently constable at Florence, and of his wife
Vincenzia Diligenti. Possessed in her girlhood of fascinating
appearance and charming manners, she came out as a ballet dancer at
the principal opera at Florence, and one night she so impressed Lord
Newborough that, by means of a golden bribe, he had her transferred
from the stage to his residence. His conduct towards her was tender
and affectionate, and, in spite of the disparity of years, he
afterwards married her, introducing her to the London world as Lady
Newborough.

Some time after her marriage, according to a memoir stated to be
written by the fair claimant of the House of Orleans, and printed in
Paris before the Revolution of 1830 but immediately suppressed, when
staying at Sienna she received a posthumous letter from her supposed
father, which, from its extraordinary disclosures, threw her into
complete bewilderment.[31] It ran as follows:

MY LADY,--I have at length reached the term of my days without
having revealed to anyone a secret which directly concerns me and
yourself. The secret is this:

On the day when you were born, of a person whom I cannot name and
who now is in the other world, a male child of mine was also
born. I was requested to make an exchange; and, considering the
state of my finances in those days, I accepted to the
often-repeated and advantageous proposals, and at that time I
adopted you as my daughter in the same manner as my son was