CHAPTER 1.I.
Vergina era D' alta belta, ma sua belta non cura: ....
Di natura, d' amor, de' cieli amici Le negligenze sue sono artifici.
"Gerusal.

Lib.," canto ii.

xiv.-xviii.
(She was a virgin of a glorious beauty, but regarded not her beauty...Negligence itself is art in those favoured by Nature, by love, and by the heavens.) At Naples, in the latter half of the last century, a worthy artist named Gaetano Pisani lived and flourished.

He was a musician of great genius, but not of popular reputation; there was in all his compositions something capricious and fantastic which did not please the taste of the Dilettanti of Naples.

He was fond of unfamiliar subjects into which he introduced airs and symphonies that excited a kind of terror in those who listened.