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[Illustration: ALFIERI AND THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY

_From the original portrait in the possession of the Marchesa A.
 Alfieri de Sostegno_]



THE COUNTESS
OF ALBANY


BY
VERNON LEE

WITH PORTRAITS




LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMX

SECOND EDITION

Printed by BALLANTYNE AND CO. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London




TO THE MEMORY OF MY FRIEND


MADAME JOHN MEYER,


I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME,
SO OFTEN AND SO LATELY TALKED OVER TOGETHER,
IN GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE REGRET.




PREFACE


In preparing this volume on the Countess of Albany (which I consider as
a kind of completion of my previous studies of eighteenth-century
Italy), I have availed myself largely of Baron Alfred von Reumont's
large work _Die Graefin von Albany_ (published in 1862); and of the
monograph, itself partially founded on the foregoing, of M. St. Rene
Taillandier, entitled _La Comtesse d'Albany_, published in Paris in
1862. Baron von Reumont's two volumes, written twenty years ago and when
the generation which had come into personal contact with the Countess of
Albany had not yet entirely died out; and M. St. Rene Taillandier's
volume, which embodied the result of his researches into the archives of
the Musee Fabre at Montpellier; might naturally be expected to have
exhausted all the information obtainable about the subject of their and
my studies. This has proved to be the case very much less than might
have been anticipated. The publication, by Jacopo Bernardi and Carlo
Milanesi, of a number of letters of Alfieri to Sienese friends, has
afforded me an insight into Alfieri's character and his relations with
the Countess of Albany such as was unattainable to Baron von Reumont and
to M. St. Rene Taillandier. The examination, by myself and my friend
Signor Mario Pratesi, of several hundreds of MS. letters of the Countess
of Albany existing in public and private archives at Siena and at
Milan, has added an important amount of what I may call psychological
detail, overlooked by Baron von Reumont and unguessed by M. St. Rene
Taillandier. I have, therefore, I trust, been able to reconstruct the
Countess of