File:The country of The ring and the book (1913) (14783414632).jpg

Identifier: countryofringb00trev (find matches)
Title: The country of The ring and the book
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Treves, Frederick, Sir, 1853-1923
Subjects: Browning, Robert, 1812-1889
Publisher: London : Cassell
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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ious house, with a doorwayworthy of a church and with heavily barred windows onthe ground floor. It has been in part modernised oflate, but with seemingly so little disturbance that theComparini, if they could once more walk the streetsof Rome, would recognise it as the Ursuline convent oftheir day. When it ceased to be an Ursuline conventI cannot ascertain. It has nothing to do with theFranceschini tragedy, but there is a story connectedwith the house which bears so strange a resemblanceto Pompilias adventure that it is worth the telling. The story of the convent concerns a young girl,not yet twenty, who was married in 1772 to a man offifty-two, whom she saw for the first time on the daythat she married him. The wedding, which took placein the north of Italy, had, like Pompilias marriage,been arranged. The bride and bridegroom residedfor a time in Rome. They then moved northwards,not to Arezzo but to Florence, where they were livingin 1781. The husband, although his nar.^e was not u4
Text Appearing After Image:
m The Ursuline Convent Guido, was a degraded brute, who treated his youngwife with such cruelty that her health was underminedand her life put in danger. He is described as a gauntman, with a bent back, a purple face, flabby cheeksand watery eyes. He was gloomy, maudlin, foul-mouthed and generally loathsome, for he was a con-firmed drunkard. The wife, on the other hand, is saidto have been pretty and dainty, with golden hair anddark blue eyes. She was a childish woman of theworld, a bright, light handful of thistle-bloom whofascinated everyone. Not the least interesting thingabout her was the fact that she signed her name11 Louise R, which meant Louise, Queen of GreatBritain, France and Ireland. Her husband was no otherthan Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender,the Bonnie Prince Charlie of a hundred wild adven-tures, and the adored of the gallant Flora Macdonald.He styled himself Charles III. of England, whilecompetent writers of the time styled him a brutalsot. His wife appeared

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