Of course there were many versions of the story of Barbarossa's attempt to capture the Duchess. Affo, the family annalist, summons all his sesquipedalian vocabulary to dignify the occurrence with such eloquence as this—"Quali fosseri gli affetti del suo delicatissimo animo in cotal fuga, degno argomento di poema! e di storia, gioverà per interrompimento di questo basso mio stile, di alzarsi a tanto incapace," &c., &c. And Muzio Giustinapolitano indited an eclogue on the subject, beginning—
"Muse! quali antri o qual riposte selve
Vi teneano in quel punto? e tu, Minerva!
Qual sacri studj? E qual nuova vaghezza
Il dolce Amor?" &c., &c.
"What were you all about, ye muses, goddesses, and you, you little god of love," &c., that you did not fly to the rescue of this adorable lady? and so forth.
It was not only declared that Barbarossa had been despatched by the Sultan, who desired to enumerate her among the beauties of his harem, but that she had flung herself out of window, in her chemise, and fled barefooted to the mountains, where she fell into the hands of some condottieri, who, recognising her, respectfully conducted her back to her castle. Giulia was very angry when these stories reached her, which she was the last, however, to hear of; and when it was learnt that she was contradicting them with warmth, another and worse story was circulated, that she had had a Moorish slave assassinated for having told the truth; in proof of which, his dead body had been cast ashore with his tongue cut out. When Giulia begged her kinsmen to refute these calumnies, they only pooh-poohed them, which greatly enraged her; and she was heard to exclaim, "What a world this is!" which, after all, was not a very original observation.
Extremely weary of herself and of things in general, she one morning languidly opened a letter from her cousin, the Marchioness of Pescara, with very little expectation of its affording her much interest or amusement.
"Vittoria is always a flight above me," she mentally said. "I never was, and never shall be, one of your grand intellectual ladies."
This was said with that species of contempt with which too many of us imply, "Your grand intellectual ladies are great stupids, after all"—but are they so? Have they not often the best of it, even in this world? Appreciation and applause that we real stupids would be very glad of, fall to the share of the working bees that make the honey, and have not some of them, at any rate, as fair a hope as any of us, of a good place in the world to come?