De Brosses, the traveller magistrate, bears, in his portraits and writings, a false air of Voltaire, with whom he had a comical dispute about a field. De Brosses often sat chatting on the edge of the bed of a Princess Borghese. In 1803, I saw in the Borghese Palace another princess who was shining with all the brilliancy of her brother's glory: Pauline Bonaparte is no more[633]! Had she lived in the days of Raphael, he would have represented her in the form of one of those Loves which recline on the backs of the lions in the Farnese Palace, and the same languor would have carried off the painter and the model. How many flowers have already passed away in those plains in which I made Jerome and Augustine, Eudorus and Cymodocœa roam!
De Brosses, King James III.
De Brosses represents the English on the Piazza d'Espagna much as we see them to-day, living together, making a great noise, eyeing poor mortals from head to foot, and returning to their brick-red dog-hole in London, after scarce so much as glancing at the Coliseum. De Brosses obtained the honour of paying his court to James III.:
"Of the two sons of the Pretender," he says, "the elder[634] is about twenty years old, the younger[635] fifteen. I have heard say by those who know them thoroughly that the elder is worth by far the more and is better loved in private; that he has a good heart and great courage; that he feels his position keenly and that, if he does not escape from it one day, it will not be for want of fearlessness. I was told that, being taken, when quite young, to the siege of Gaeta[636], at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples by the Spaniards, during the crossing his hat came to fall into the sea. They wanted to pick it up:
"'No,' said he, 'it is not worth while; I shall surely have to go to fetch it myself one day.'"
De Brosses believes that, if the Prince of Wales attempts anything, he will not succeed, and he gives his reasons. Returning to Rome after his gallant exploits, Charles Edward, who bore the name of Count of Albany, lost his father[637]; he married the Princess of Stolberg-Gedern[638] and settled in Tuscany. Is it true that he secretly visited London in 1753 and 1761, as Hume tells us, that he was present at the coronation of George III., and that he said to some one who recognised him in the crowd:
"The man who is the object of all this pomp is he whom I envy least?"
The Pretender's was not a happy union; the Countess of Albany separated from him and fixed her residence in Rome: it was there that another traveller, Bonstetten[639], met her; the Bernese gentleman, in his old age, gave me to understand, at Geneva, that he had letters written in the first youth of the Countess of Albany[640].
Alfieri saw the wife of the Pretender at Florence, and fell in love with her for life:
"Twelve years afterwards," he says, "at the moment I am writing, and at an age when the illusions of the passions have ceased to operate, I feel that I become daily more attached to her, in proportion as time destroys the brilliancy of her fleeting beauty, the only charm which she owes not to herself. Whenever I reflect on her virtues, my soul is elevated, improved and tranquillized, and I dare to affirm that the feelings of her mind, which I have uniformly endeavoured to fortify and confirm, are not dissimilar to my own[641]."
I have met Madame d'Albany at Florence; age had apparently produced in her an effect contrary to that which it generally produces: time ennobles the countenance and, when it belongs to an old race, imprints some trace of that race on the brow which it has marked; the Countess of Albany was thick-set, with expressionless features and a common air. If the women in Rubens' pictures were to grow old, they would be like Madame d'Albany at the age at which I met her. I am sorry that that heart, "fortified and confirmed" by Alfieri, should have had need of another support[642]. I will here recall a passage from my Letter on Rome to M. de Fontanes: