what he wished the world to
consider as his ideal love for Mme. d'Albany, or was it Lady Ligonier's
determination to let him know that desertion by him had made her neither
more disreputable nor more unhappy than before, I cannot tell; but
certain it is that something in this letter appears to have put Alfieri,
who had not objected to Mme. d'Albany's mean behaviour towards George
III., into a condition of ruffled virtue and dignity.

"I copy this letter," he writes in his memoirs, "in order to give an
idea of this woman's eccentric and obstinately evilly-inclined
character."

Did it never occur to Alfieri that his own character, whose faults
during youth he so keenly appreciated, was not improving with years?

CHAPTER XVI.

THE MISOGALLO.

Alfieri and Madame d'Albany were scarcely back in Paris, and settled in
a new house, when the disorders in Paris and the movements of the
Imperial troops on the frontier began to make the situation of
foreigners difficult and dangerous. The storming of the Tuileries, the
great slaughter of the 10th August 1792, admonished them to sacrifice
everything to their safety. With considerable difficulty a passport for
the Countess had been obtained from the Swedish Minister, one for
Alfieri from the Venetian Resident (almost the only diplomatic
representatives, says Alfieri, who still remained to that ghost of a
king), and a passport for each of them and for each of their servants
from their communal section. Departure was fixed for the 20th August,
but Alfieri's black presentiments hastened it to the 18th. Arrived at
the Barriere Blanche, on the road to Calais, passports were examined by
two or three soldiers of the National Guard, and the gates were on the
point of being opened to let the two heavily-loaded carriages pass, when
suddenly, from out of a neighbouring pot-house, rushed some twenty-five
or thirty ruffians, ragged, drunken, and furious. They surrounded the
carriages, yelling that all the rich were running away and leaving them
to starve without work; and a crowd rapidly formed round them and the
National Guards, who wanted the travellers to be permitted to pass on.
Alfieri jumps out of the carriage, brandishing his seven passports, and
throws himself, a long, lean, red-haired man, fiercely gesticulating and
yelling at the top of his voice, among the crowd, forcing this man and
that to read the passports, crying frantically, "Look! Listen! Name
Alfieri. Italian and