of the world, its folly and wickedness in
permitting that a girl like Louise of Stolberg should be married to a
man like Charles Edward, its injustice and cruelty in forbidding the
legal breaking of such an unrighteous contract; the evil practice of the
world which condemned the Countess of Albany to be for so much of her
life an unhappy woman, also condemned her to be in some of her actions a
woman deserving of blame. We shall see further on how, in the attempt to
work out their happiness in despite of the evil world in which they
lived, the Countess and Alfieri, infinitely intellectually and morally
superior to many of us whom circumstances permit to live blameless and
comfortable, were splashed with the mud of unrighteousness, which was
foreign to their nature, and remained spotted in the eyes of posterity.

Charles Edward did what he had done once before in his life: he applied
to the Government to put him again in possession of the woman whom he
had victimised; but as the French Government had refused to recognise
his claims over his fugitive mistress, so the Government of the Grand
Duke of Tuscany now refused to give him back his fugitive wife. The
Countess of Albany had naturally taken no clothes with her in her
flight; and she presently sent a maid to the palace in Via San Sebastiano
to fetch such things as she might require. But Charles Edward would not
permit a single one of her effects to be touched; if she wanted her
clothes and trinkets, she might come and fetch them herself. However,
after a few days, a message came from the Pope, ordering the Pretender
to supply his wife with whatever she might require; a threat to suspend
the pension was probably expressed or implied, for Charles Edward
immediately obeyed.

Meanwhile, the Countess of Albany was anxiously awaiting at the convent
of the Bianchette a decision from her brother-in-law, to whom she had
written immediately after her flight. Those first days must have been
painfully unquiet. What if the Tuscan Court should listen to the Count
of Albany's entreaties? What if Cardinal York should take part with his
brother? Return to the house of her husband would be death or worse
than death. Cardinal York answered immediately: a long, kind, rather
weak-minded letter, the ideal letter of a well-intentioned, rather
silly priest, in curious Anglo-Roman French. He informed her that for
some time past he had expected to hear of her flight from her husband;
he prote