[104]. Count Alexis de Saint Priest, author of several tragedies, and also of historical works of more than average merit.
[105]. It is amusing to contrast the well-bred kindliness of feeling with which Miss Knight accepts the dresses presented to her by the Queen-Dowager of Würtemberg, with the under-bred fussiness displayed by Miss Burney, when Queen Charlotte presumed to send her a gown by the hands of Madame Schwellenburg.
[106]. In conformity with diplomatic usage, Russia being the youngest member of the great European family. The Duke of Wellington it will be remembered, called the battle of Navarino an “untoward accident.” It was fought on the 20th October, 1827.
[107]. M. de Vathnesuil, one of the six Advocates-General of the Court of Cassation.
[108]. During the greater part of March, Miss Knight had been confined to her room by severe illness.
[109]. Diebitch’s army had melted “like snow at the glance of the Lord” by the time he reached Adrianople. The Treaty of Adrianople saved the remnants of the Russian forces rather than Constantinople.
[110]. “It has been asserted” (says Lord Holland in his “Foreign Reminiscences,” p. 87) “that his (Manuel Godoy’s) marriage with the daughter of the Infant Don Luis originated in a malicious trait of jealousy of the Queen. The story goes, that she brought the King unexpectedly to the apartment of the favourite, and surprised him when supping tête-à-tête with Mademoiselle Tudo (the daughter of an artillery officer), a lady of extraordinary beauty, to whom he was clandestinely married, though some say by a contract which the laws would consider as invalid; that the King was partly shocked and partly diverted at the discovery; that he shortly afterwards, at the suggestion of the Queen, with a view of providing, without the peril of a deadly sin, for the incontinence of his favourite, insisted on matrimony, and condescended to offer his young and recently acknowledged cousin for a bride; that the Prince of the Peace, not daring to acknowledge his union with the Tudo, and still less to decline the royal alliance without alleging some such insurmountable bar, prevailed on the wife of his affections to suppress the truth, and allowed Charles, in his zeal to rescue him from more venial and ordinary vices, to involve him in the heinous and troublesome sin of bigamy. I do not vouch for the truth of the tale. Well-informed persons believed it, and related it to me. It is certain that the ostensible marriage with the Princess, which took place in 1797, never interrupted his connexion with the Tudo. During his prosperity, she was generally lodged in a royal palace, or in an adjoining apartment. After his exile and adversity, she followed him to Rome, and has always been treated by him, his friends, and even the Royal Family, as a personage in some sort legitimately entitled to the society, tenderness, and protection of the Prince of Peace.”
[111]. Signor Horatio Pallavicini quitted his native country and settled in the Netherlands, where he married a woman of low extraction. On her death, he crossed over into England, and was appointed by Queen Mary collector of the papal taxes gathered in the kingdom. At Mary’s decease he happened to have thus a large sum of money in his possession, and accordingly turned Protestant. His talents and knowledge of continental languages rendered him very useful to Queen Elizabeth, who conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. In the following year he fitted out and commanded a ship against the Spanish Armada, and his portrait was placed among those of the patriots who distinguished themselves on that occasion in the tapestry that hung in the old House of Lords. He died in 1600, leaving his second wife, daughter of Egidius Hooftman of Antwerp, in possession of immense wealth. In the following year she married Sir Oliver Cromwell, uncle and godfather of the Protector. Two sons and a daughter by her former husband, Sir Horatio Pallavicini, married two daughters and a son of her second husband by his former wife. It does not appear that Lady Cromwell ever visited Genoa at all. Her son Oliver may have done so, as he was certainly a student at Padua. He was killed by the fall of some buildings at Rome. There is no mention of any other member of the family going to Italy. See the Rev. Mark Noble’s “Memoirs of the Protectoral House of Cromwell.”
[112]. This story is told on the authority of the Countess d’Uglas.
[113]. “Massacre them!”