five letters, as I have said, are addressed to
a "Dear Signor Francesco, friend of my friend," and who, of course,
is Francesco Gori; and are written, which no other letters of Mme.
d'Albany's are, not in French, but in tolerably idiomatic though far
from correct Italian. Only one of them has any indication of place or
date, "Genzano, Mardi"; but this, and the references to Alfieri's
approaching journey northward and to Gori's intention of escorting him
as far as Genoa, is sufficient to show that they must have been written
in the summer of 1783, when Cardinal York, terrified at the liberty
which he had allowed to his sister-in-law, had conveyed her safely to
some villa in the Alban Hills. The woman who wrote these letters is a
strangely different being from the quiet jog-trot, rather cynically
philosophical Countess of Albany whom we know from all her other
innumerable manuscript letters, from the published answers of Sismondi,
of Foscolo and of Mme. de Souza to letters of hers which have disappeared.
The hysterical frenzy of Alfieri seems to have entered into this woman;
he has worked up this naturally placid but malleable soul, this woman in
bad health, deprived of all friends, jealously guarded by enemies, weak
and depressed, until she has become another himself, "weeping, raving,"
like himself, but unable to relieve, perhaps to enjoy, all this frantic
grief by running about like the mad Orlando, or talking and weeping by
the hour to a compassionate Gori.

"Dear Signor Francesco," she writes; "how grateful I am to you for your
compassion. You can't have a notion of our unhappiness. My misery is not
in the least less than that of our friend. There are moments when I
feel my heart torn to pieces thinking of all that he must suffer. I have
no consolation except your being with him, and that is something. Never
let him remain alone. He is worse, and I know that he greatly enjoys
your society, for you are the only person who does not bore him and whom
he always meets with pleasure. Oh! dear Signor Francesco, in what a sea
of miseries are we not! You also, because our miseries are certainly
also yours. I no longer live; and if it were not for my friend, for whom
I am keeping myself, I would not drag out this miserable life. What do I
do in this world? I am a useless creature in it; and why should I suffer
when it is of no use to anyone? But my friend--I cannot make up my mind
to leave him, and he must live for his own glo