Two long letters went to the Pope that February; one was from the
Countess, the other from the Earl. They are both yet extant, and they
show the character of each as no description could set it forth.

The Countess's letter is a mixture of pious demureness and querulous
selfishness. She tells the Pope that all her life she has intensely
desired to be a nun: that she is, unhappily, in the irreligious position
of a matron, and, moreover, is the suffering wife of an impious husband.
This sinful man requires of her--of her, a soul devoted to religion--
that she shall behave as if she belonged to the wicked world which holds
himself within its thrall, and shall sacrifice God to him. She humbly
and fervently entreats the holy Father to grant her a divorce from these
bonds of matrimony which so cruelly oppress her, and to set her soul
free that it may soar upwards unrestrained. It is the letter of a woman
who did wish to serve God, but who was incapable of recognising that it
was possible to do it without shutting herself up in stone walls, and
starving body and soul alike.

The Earl's letter is of an entirely different calibre. He tells the
Pope in his turn that he is wedded to a woman whom he dearly loves, and
who resolutely keeps him at arm's length. She will not make a friend of
him, nor behave as a good wife ought to do. This is all he asks of her;
he is as far as can be from wishing to be unkind to her or to cross her
wishes. He only wants her to live with him on reasonable and ordinary
terms. But she--and here the Earl's irrepressible humour breaks out; he
must see the comical side even of his own sorest trouble, and certainly
this had its comical side--she will not sit next to him at table, but
insists on putting her confessor between; she will not answer Yes or No
to his simplest question, but invariably returns the answer through a
third person. When she goes into her private apartments, she turns the
key in his face. Does the holy Father think this is the way that a
rational wife ought to behave to her own husband? and will he not
remonstrate with her, and induce her to use him a little more kindly and
reasonably than she does? The Earl's letter is that of an injured and
justly provoked man; of a man who loves his wife too well to coerce or
quarrel with her, and who thoroughly perceives the absurdity of his
position no less than its pain. Yet he does feel the pain bitterly, and
he would do anything to