membership was not in any case much known or
spoken of. For, it was one of the rules of these
societies that no man should disclose to any one
not belonging to the confraternity the fact of his
enrolment in it. The evidence, however, in the
present instance seemed good, and the less
experienced of the debaters were inclined to attach
much weight to the circumstance. Those who
had been longer married, however, altogether
pooh-poohed it. "Oh yes! The discipline
companies!" said they. "We know what that
means. Why do they meet always at night?
That may do for his wife, the duchess, but not
for us. I think I see Jacopo offering his
shoulders to the scourge in the hand of some fat
citizen, sweating his sins of false weights and
clipped coin off his conscience! No, no! If
Salviati is a member of one of those very convenient
companies, you may be sure religion has
nothing to do with the matter."

Upon the whole, the idea that the duke could
have fallen into religion a good thirty years before
his time was dismissed as too preposterous.

Could it be witchcraft? Ay! that, indeed, was
a more probable solution of the mystery. There
were not wanting among their own set those who
assuredly would have the wish, and were much
suspected of possessing the science, necessary for
the ministering of a love-philtre to so generally
coveted a prize. The Duchess Veronica herself?
Ah! What more likely! The duchess, though
she habitually received with magnificent
hospitality all the select society of Florence, and
frequently appeared, as her rank required, at the
court, yet was not on such intimate terms with
the generality of the Florentine ladies as to be
considered one of themselves. This was in part
caused by the pre-eminence of her rank; for she
was the daughter of a sovereign prince—and
partly by a natural reserve and seriousness of
character, which indisposed her for mixing on
equal terms with so very light and frivolous a
society. The Duchess Veronica, moreover, was
not a happy woman, and she shrank from the gay
crowd, who were utterly incapable of
sympathising with her sorrows, as a stricken deer slinks
away from the herd. That a wife, and one of
some seven or eight years' standing too, should
be made seriously unhappy by a husband's
infidelities appeared so ridiculous, indeed so
inconceivable, that, though many a sneer was
levelled at pretensions so absurd, the greater
number of her female critics believed that such
conduct was but a very needlessly hypocritical
mask adopted for the concealment of her own
irregularities. In short, the Duchess Veronica
was as unpopular in the gay world of
Florence as the duke was the reverse. And it
was at once agreed, nem. con., that there was a
considerable degree of antecedent probability that
the duke's inexplicable insensibility to attractions
which once had been powerful over
him, was due to unfair tampering with the black
art; and a peculiarly disgusting feature was
added to the atrocity by the fact, that his own
wife was the person most open to suspicion of
having thus endeavoured to monopolise him.

Bat then, again, as it was logically urged by
one deeply meditating fair one, if the Lady
Veronica had been practising in this manner, it
followed from the facts of the case that she had
been successful in her schemes. If so, things
must now be going on very differently in that
noble home from what they had all had
opportunities—too many, indeed, as they declared
with unanimous shrugs of white shoulders, and
shaking of ambrosial top-knots—of observing
before now. And the duchess would probably
have been observed to clear her moody brow,
and cease those absurd and ludicrous manifestations
of jealousy, which made her a ridicule and
really a disgrace, my dears, to society. Could
any one say whether any such changes had been
observed? And forthwith was elicited abundant
testimony to the contrary. It was declared on
all hands that the Duchess Veronica was more
unbearable with her black humours and gloominess
than ever. The Principessa Olympia had
been at the palazzo after the passeggiata only
yester evening: " And when il povero Jacopo
called for his hat and gloves, and merely said to
the man that he should not sup at home, you
should have seen the scowl on her ladyship's
face!"

"Indeed, I wonder that he ever goes home at
all, for my part," said the Contessa Giacinta, who
had recently been married to a man old enough
to be her grandfather; "I am sure I should not,
in his place."

And then came a whole chorus of pity for so
unhappy a husband, and of indignant vituperation
on so unreasonable and disagreeable a wife.
But the mystery of the sad change in Salviati
remained as dark as ever.

Upon one occasion, towards the end of October,
in the year 1638, a good deal of conversation
of the above described sort had passed among a
knot of noble ladies assembled at the house of
one of the party. The Contessa Cecilia Neri,
who had taken but little active part in it,
although it was supposed that she felt an
especial interest in the subject (and her fair
friends had accordingly been in a great degree
talking at her), but who had none the less been
an attentive listener to all that had been said,
returned home determined at once to put into
execution a plan which had occurred to her for
arriving at the real truth of the matter. This lady
was still unquestionably one of the most
beautiful, though no longer one of the youngest, of
the party; and it was generally understood that
her career had been by no means a tame or
uneventful one.

Immediately on reaching the solitude of her
own chamber, she wrote, and forthwith
despatched, the following note:

My most valued friend, I am sure that for the
sake of old times—pleasanter times they were, dear
friend, than any I have seen since, I trow—you will
be pleased with the opportunity of doing me a little