s allies, and signed the Treaty of
Bale, in 1795.

Such was the triumphant issue of Madame Rietz's intervention in the
affairs of Europe; such the proof she gave to the world of her conquest
of a King. It was thus with a light heart that she turned her back on
the Rhine camp; and with her husband's children and a splendid retinue
set out on her journey to Italy, to see which was the greatest ambition
of her life. At the Austrian Court she was coldly received, it is true,
thanks to her part in the Treaty of Bale; but in Italy she was greeted
as a Queen. At Naples Queen Caroline received her as a sister; the
trumpeter's daughter was the brilliant centre of fetes and banquets and
receptions such as might have gratified the vanity of an Empress: while
at Florence she spent days of ideal happiness under the blue sky of
Italy and among her beauties of Nature and Art.

It was at Venice that she wrote to her King lover, "Your Majesty knows
well that, for myself, I place no value on the foolish vanities of Court
etiquette; but I am placed in an awkward position by my daughter being
raised to the rank of Countess, while I am still in the lowly position
of a bourgeoise." She had, in fact, always declined the honour of a
title, which Frederick William had so often begged her to accept; and it
was only for her daughter's sake, when the question of an alliance
between the young Countess de la Marke and Lord Bristol's heir arose,
that she at last stooped to ask for what she had so long refused.

A few weeks later her brother, the King's equerry, placed in her hands
the patent which made her Countess Lichtenau, with the right to bear on
her shield of arms the Prussian eagle and the Royal crown.

Wherever the Countess (as we must now call her) went on her Italian
tour she drew men to her feet by the magnetism of her beauty, who would
have paid no homage to her as _chere amie_ of a King; for she was now in
the early thirties, in the full bloom of the loveliness that had its
obscure budding in the Potsdam barrack-rooms. Young and old were equally
powerless to resist her fascinations. She had, indeed, no more ardent
slave and admirer than my Lord Bristol, the octogenarian Bishop of
Londonderry, whose passion for the Countess, young enough to be his
granddaughter, was that of a lovesick youth.

From "dear Countess and adorable friend," he quickly leaps in his
letters to "my dear Wilhelmine." He looks forward with the impatience of
a bo