ed to speak to the
Countess of Albany. "I saw her," he wrote many years later, "but (O God!
my heart seems to break at the mere recollection) I saw her a prisoner
behind a grating; less tormented than in Florence, but yet not less
unhappy. We were separated, and who could tell how long our separation
might not last? But, while crying, I tried to console myself with the
thought that she might at least recover her health, that she would
breathe freely, and sleep peacefully, no longer trembling at every
moment before the indivisible shadow of her drunken husband; that she
might, in short, live."

CHAPTER X.

ANTIGONE.

About three months after the Countess of Albany's flight from her
husband, the Pope granted her permission to leave the Ursuline convent;
and her brother-in-law, Cardinal York, offered her hospitality in his
magnificent palace of the Cancelleria. Alfieri was at Naples when he
received this news, riding gloomily along the sea-shore, weeping
profusely (for we must remember that to an Italian, especially of the
eighteenth century, there is no incongruity in a would-be ancient Roman
shedding love-sick tears), unable to give his attention to work, living,
as he expresses it, on the coming in and going out of the post. "I
wished to return to Rome," he writes, "and at the same time I felt very
keenly that I ought not to do it yet. The struggles between love and
duty which take place in an honourable and tender heart, are the most
terrible and mortal pain that a man can suffer. I delayed throughout
April, and I determined to drag on through May; but on the 12th May I
found myself, I scarcely know how, back in Rome."

Alfieri found the Countess of Albany established in the palace of the
Cancelleria, the mistress of the establishment, for her brother-in-law
was living in his episcopal town of Frascati. They were free to see each
other as much as they chose, to love each other as much as they would;
for the Cardinal and the priestly circles seem to have gone completely
to sleep in the presence of this critical situation; and the habits of
Roman society, which were even a shade worse than those of Florence,
were not such as to give umbrage to the lovers. But those years during
which they had loved under the vigilant jealousy of Charles Edward, had
apparently fostered a love which was accustomed and satisfied with being
only a more passionate kind of friendship; the indomitable power of
resistance to himself