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Updated: June 29, 2025
"I will make myself intelligible to you," said he, in a milder tone. "You must understand, that I know you, Corilla. That assassin who followed the Princess Tartaroff at the festival of Cardinal Bernis, was employed by you, Signora Maddalena Morelli Fernandez, called Corilla!"
But as Corilla is well worth two thousand scudi, I am content. Give me eight thousand scudi and the promise to crown Corilla!" "As soon as I am pope, I will do both. My sacred word for it! Shall I strengthen my promise by swearing upon the Bible?" Cardinal Albani gave the questioner a glance of astonishment, and then broke out with a loud and scornful laugh.
"No," said Albani, laughing; "the noble Juno was not exactly true to her Vulcan, and I require a faithful love! Would you be that, Corilla?" "We shall see," said she, changing the arrangement of the diadem before the glass "we shall see, my worthy friend. But forget not the conditions first the laurel-crown!" "You shall have it!" triumphantly responded the cardinal.
Corilla was 'straba', like Venus as painted by the ancients why, I cannot think, for however fair a squint-eyed woman may be otherwise, I always look upon her face as distorted. I am sure that if Venus had been in truth a goddess, she would have made the eccentric Greek, who first dared to paint her cross-eyed, feel the weight of her anger.
"Of Corilla," interposed the cardinal "yes of Corilla I speak, of that heavenly woman whom all the world admires; to whose beautiful verses philosophers and poets listen with breathless delight, and who well deserves that you should reward her as a queen by bestowing upon her the poetic crown!" "I crown a Corilla!" mockingly exclaimed the pope.
In Florence, the art of making improviso verses which has ever been popular in southern countries seems to have reached its highest state of perfection during this eighteenth century, and a woman, the celebrated Corilla, was acknowledged to be the most expert in this accomplishment.
Carlo broke out into a scornful laugh, and then seriously and proudly said: "I am a Neapolitan, and with us men do not allow themselves to be constrained to love, and no woman there dares utter the command, 'Thou shalt love me! I will not, Signora Corilla!" "You will not!" screamed she, gnashing her teeth. "Then woe to you and to her!"
It animated Corilla to new improvisations; she again and again recurred to the urn, drawing forth new themes, and seemed to be absolutely inexhaustible. "It is now enough," whispered Carlo, just as she had drawn forth a new theme. "You have but a quarter of an hour left!" "Only this theme yet," she begged in a low tone.
Will you do it?" Braschi gave the cardinal a sly glance. "Ah," said he, "Signora Corilla seems to be less liberal than Signora Malveda? She will allow you no discount of her future laurel-crown, is it not so? I know nothing worse than an ambitious woman.
On the twenty-sixth of May then, with the senator Quirini's letters to Corilla, with the Countess of Starenberg's letters to some Tuscan friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this night under the pope's protection: may God but grant us his!
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