'My daughter can entertain no proposal until her children are duly established; or would she, who is young and lovely and archly capricious, continue to decline the very best offers of the Milanese nobility, and live on one flat in an old quarter of the city, instead of in a bright and handsome street, musical with equipages, and full of the shows of life ?' In conjunction with certain friends of the signora, the count worked diligently for the immediate restitution of the estates.

He was ably seconded by the young princess of Schyll-Weilingen,--by marriage countess of Fohrendorf, duchess of Graatli, in central Germany, by which title she passed,--an Austrian princess; she who had loved Giacomo, and would have given all for him, and who now loved his widow.

The extreme and painful difficulty was that the Signora Piaveni made no concealment of her abhorrence of the House of Austria, and hatred of Austrian rule in Italy.

The spirit of her dead husband had come to her from the grave, and warmed a frame previously indifferent to anything save his personal merits.

It had been covertly communicated to her that if she performed due submission to the authorities, and lived for six months in good legal, that is to say, nonpatriotic odour, she might hope to have the estates.