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Mme. d'Albany may have remembered how her mother-in-law Clementina Sobieska, although protected by the Pope, had been eventually got out of the convent whither she had escaped, and had been restored to her husband the Pretender James; she was probably aware, also, how Charles Edward had stormed at the French Government to have Miss Walkenshaw sent back to him from the convent at Meaux.

The Pretender, separated from his wife in consequence of circumstances which will be related further on, called to him, as sole companion of his old age, his illegitimate daughter by Miss Walkenshaw, after neglecting and apparently forgetting both her and her mother for twenty years; is it likely he would have done this had he possessed a legitimate son?

To the unlucky women whom he loved he was astonishingly brutal; he forced Miss Walkenshaw the lady of whom he became enamoured in Scotland to leave him by his cruelty; he forced his unhappy wife, the Countess of Albany, to leave him for the same reason. Her love affair with the poet Alfieri is one of the famous love-stories of the world.

We hear that Charles Edward's confessor, with whom, despite his secret abjuration of Catholicism, he continued to associate, was a notorious drunkard; and that the mistress with whom he lived for many years, and whom he even passed off as his wife, was also addicted to drinking; nay, Lord Elcho is said to have witnessed a tipsy squabble between the Young Pretender and Miss Walkenshaw, the lady in question, across the table of a low Paris tavern.

It was already rumoured that Blunt, the captain, had been invited to spend Christmas at Walkenshaw's, the mathematical Dux's, and every one knew how well Miss Walkenshaw and Blunt had "hit it" the last prize day, and prophecies were rife accordingly.

The very year after her own separation from Alfieri, the Pretender had called to Florence the natural daughter born to him by Miss Walkenshaw, and whom he had left, apparently forgotten for twenty-five years, in the convent at Meaux, where her mother had taken refuge from his brutalities, even as Louise d'Albany had taken refuge from them in the convent of the Bianchette.

His further behaviour towards Miss Walkenshaw shows the same indifference to everything except what he considered his own rights.

Still, the fact remains that while Louise d'Albany was secretly or openly making light of all social institutions, and living as the mistress, almost the wife, of Alfieri; this insignificant Charlotte, this bastard of a Miss Walkenshaw, this woman who had probably never had an enthusiasm, or an ideal, or a thought, had succeeded in reclaiming whatever there remained of human in the degraded Charles Edward; had succeeded in doing the world the service of laying out at least with decency and decorum this living corpse which had once contained the soul of a hero, so that posterity might look upon it without too much contempt and loathing, nay, almost, seeing it so quiet and seemingly peaceful, with compassion and reverence.

It is curious that he should introduce a Capucin, a Jew, and a black-eyed damsel, all in the Ghent diligence, when we know that Prince Charles did live in Ghent, with the black-eyed Miss Walkenshaw, did go about disguised as a Capucin, and was tracked by a Jewish spy, while the other spy, Young Glengarry, styled himself "Pickle."