tender and faithful to the very end, a union where perfect trust and perfect affection hallowed and illuminated every thought and and action of husband and wife. Both, it is true, were profoundly religious at heart, and, regarding their union as a supremely sacred matter, brought every sense and faculty to fulfilling the obligations it imposed; one can only feel that their crystal purity of intention received its fitting reward. There is something to be said, too, for the atmosphere in which they found themselves, an atmosphere where virtue and faith and sweetness were expected as matters of course, and where the modern theory of individual rights, irrespective of family obligations, would have been regarded as the blackest of heresies.

Princess Gondina had always put her whole heart into whatever she undertook; her little copybooks are full of a clear, strong handwriting, and testify to a great deal of intelligence as well as good-will even when she was very young. That her intelligence was much above the average is shown by her later correspondence. Her views are always sensible as well as elevated, and they are expressed with commendable clearness and concentration. Her husband's complete trust in her judgment is shown again and again during the enforced separation which events induced. After writing to express his own wishes and feelings on the burning the burning questions which arose,

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he always wound up by saying, "Nevertheless, I leave everything in your hands. Use your own judgment-it will certainly be right."

The most important years of Gondina's development had been passed in the close seclusion of the convent, where, judged by modern standards, the education must have been anything but liberal; yet when she came out to be married she at once took her place in an exceedingly critical, and, to her, quite unknown society, with perfect grace and dignity, and learned men pronounced her to be a very cultivated woman. A letter written before her marriage describes her as "so beautiful, so white, so diaphanous, that she is enchanting to behold. Her hands are miraculous. . . . She is very gentle and very cultured."

When she married Giovanni Patrizi, his father, Francesco, was a man of only middle age, and in every sense the head of the family. His son could own no property during his father's life-time, and the latter ruled, in theory, as autocratically as any oriental potentate. But, in fact, he was not particularly interested in ruling; his own tastes and aspirations were literary and artistic, and he gladly left the management of his many affairs to his wife Porzia, and his eldest son. The former was a very notable woman, and the administration could not have fallen into more capable hands. Judged from her own letters alone, of which there are great numbers in the Patrizi archives, she appears as the

most practical and the most resolute of business women. Her handwriting is vigorously masculine, and her orders as short and incisive as military commands. But in the private diaries and letters of her children Porzia Patrizi appears in quite a different light, tenderly affectionate and warmhearted, scrupulously considerate of the feelings of others, and a pillar of strength in time of trouble. The only portrait of "Marchesa Porzia" in the Patrizi gallery was painted very soon after her marriage, and one finds it difficult to connect the smiling, rather mischievous, but extremely pretty young woman, dressed in the richest of Pompadour costumes-all gold lace and rosebuds-with the mother and grandmother of later life, who (like a certain gentleman of Irish fame) was loved as much as she was feared, and feared as much as she was loved.

Marchesa Porzia and Cunegonda of Saxony understood each other at once, and the tie between them only strengthened with the passing of years. Yet, to our modern eyes, the relation would seem a very hazardous one at first sight, for the etiquette of the time did not grant the young couple even a day of privacy after their wedding. This took place on January 7, at the Church of St. Philip Neri, a saint for whom Giovanni Patrizi had a special devotion. There was a grand feast and reception afterwards at the Patrizi Palace, and when this was over the bride and bridegroom drove out to Albano, accompanied by the latter's father and