Nothing would please me better than to

"What shall she be named - the Bes

give this surprise and gratification to a sie?" kind, good man. But it is not of any use

"The Bessie!" Mr. Gotham shrank

proposing it to my father; he would not back. "No-on no account-the Jo

hear of it; he would cover me with ridi-sephine." cule, jeer at the suggestion, and dismiss

it."

"But I suppose that when of age, you can claim your money to do with it what you will?"

"I do not know. I am of age next month; but it does not follow that I shall get my money if I ask for it. I am not going to have a lawsuit for it with my father."

From The Fortnightly Review. VALENTINE VISCONTI.

IN TWO PARTS. PART I.

I.

VALENTINE VISCONTI, the origin of greater wars than Helen, was born in the "I will make a suggestion, Josephine," Abbey of Pavia, in the year 1366. Her said the old man, still working his stick, grandfather, Galeazzo Visconti, had left and working it faster. "I have money at Milan rather suddenly in ill health, poimy disposal which I am ready to lend soned, as he believed, by his brother, who you for this purpose. You shall borrow was co-tyrant with him of Lombardy. He it of me, giving me an acknowledgment, had designed a safe and splendid castle and you shall buy Richard a ship. There for himself in Pavia. While it was still is a new and beautiful little cutter being unfinished Valentine was born in the hosbuilt by Messrs. Grimes and Newbold. pitable old Certosa there. She is very nearly ready for sea. What do you say to buying her and fitting her up with everything necessary, and presenting her to Richard Cable?"

"My father will never allow it." Josephine's face was burning, her dark eyes sparkling.

"Do not say a word about it to him. The arrangement is between you and me. I think with you that some fitting acknowledgment should be made to Richard. He was right to refuse ten pounds. The world will cry shame on your father and you unless something be done for your preserver. Do not bring me in. I lend you the money; I do nothing more. I am ignorant of the purpose for which you borrow it-it is a business transaction."

"But- "Josephine hesitated. She was pleased with the idea, yet something in her cautioned her not to close with the "But, Mr. Gotham proposal. she colored deeply - "will not people consider it odd? Will it not give occasion to talk?"

"People will suppose your father has in this way recompensed Cable. They need not know that he has nothing to do with it, any more than they need know that I have helped in the matter. The talk will be that Mr. Justin Cornellis has done the right thing, and done it handsomely. Do not let it get wind that he offered ten pounds; that would make talk, and talk not pleasant to hear. Folk would say he valued you cheaply. You shall buy the boat of Messrs. Grimes and Newbold, and name her."

Galeazzo Visconti had taken with him from Milan his wife, Blanche of Savoy, his little daughter Iolanthe, and his married son Giangaleazzo, with his wife Isabelle. These last were the parents of Valentine. When she was born her mother was sixteen and her father fifteen years of age.* At her nativity there were, we are told, incredible rejoicings; for the pride of Galeazzo Visconti was gratified by the birth of a grandchild, who was no less the granddaughter of a king of France.

The mother of Valentine was that little French princess who, six years ago, had been sold into Lombardy to help to raise the golden millions of her father's ransom. John the Good had received for his daughter the sum of five hundred thousand golden florins, a sort of inverse marriage portion, the price of a royal alliance. But Galeazzo had not paid for barren honor only; Isabelle had brought her husband the county and the title of Vertus in Champagne. Though the little girl had gone weeping into Italy, her tears were soon dried. She had left a devastated and ruined country; she came into a land of sumptuous tyranny, of riches and magnificence. Life was easy at Milan and at Pavia, where Galeazzo was busied with his new university, where Giangaleazzo a timid, intellectual, orderly creature spent day after day in his study full of

Corio on different pages puts the date of the birth of Giangaleazzo as 1352 and 1343. The first date, 1352, agrees with the account of Galeotto del Caretto and the deed of majority in Corio.

*

enormous parchment ledgers, directing the | ing-stock in the house of Bernabò. Alstaff of secretaries who copied into them though the young man had taken care to his accounts, his memoranda, and copies obtain from the emperor investitures of his correspondence. Priests and friars which conferred upon him absolute aufrom the old Certosa, professors of law thority; although by his judicious proand learning from the new college, learned tection of the people he made himself the men like Philippe de Mézières, visitors desired deliverer of the unhappy Milanese, from so far away as England, France, or still Bernabò and his children could not Cyprus these were the guests of the take their kinsman seriously. And the palace. Gradually the stately home echoed better to lull their suspicions, in 1380 the with children's voices. Valentine was young Count of Vertus came a-courting to born in 1366. One brother grew strong the noisy Castello di Porta Giovio, where and playful at her side; another died in Bernabò kept house with such of his ninebabyhood. When the third was born, in and-twenty children as still remained in 1373, Isabelle died, and a few months after Milan. It was a great riotous house full her baby followed her. of voices, full of splendid young men in armor (Palamedes, Lancilotto, Sagramoro), full of beautiful women and fair young girls with lovely names (Achiletta, Verde, Damigella), and not less radiant for their easy familiarity with evil. One of these dangerous maidens, Caterina, the Count of Vertus took to be his second wife. In the next year, in 1381, on the fourth of October, his boy, Astorre, died.

The immense castle of Pavia was very quiet now. Isabelle was dead, and her baby; Iolanthe, the girl-widow of the Duke of Clarence, had married, in 1372, the Marquis of Monferrat. There were only the old Visconti and his wife, and the studious young Count of Vertus and his two little children. He, at least, did nothing to make the palace livelier, for he had a constant horror of being murdered. Guards and double guards watched the narrow portals, and let nothing in that was not familiar and secure.

It was quieter still when, in 1378, Galeazzo Visconti died. He had been a terrible old man; cruel, unscrupulous, scholarly. It was he who obtained from the emperor, Charles IV., in 1361, the privilege to found the University of Pavia, and he who protected it by an edict threatening with heavy punishments the Milanese who dared to study in another school. And he it was, also, who threw alive into a fiery furnace two priests who came to him on an unwelcome message; and who, with his brother Bernabò, had poisoned their third brother, co-heir and co-tyrant with them in Lombardy. They had divided his share, Galeazzo taking Piacenza, Pavia, the west to Novara, and as far as Como in the north; while Bernabò possessed the rich province of the east. Both ruled alike in Milan. Both should have been equally powerful. But Galeazzo had left all his share to the sole Count of Vertus, and he, too, had only one son to follow him, whereas the signory of Bernabò was strengthened and divided by eleven turbulent and violent young sons.

Valentine's father remembered the fate of his uncle. He kept very quiet, surrounded himself with priests and guards, ate of no dish before a score of stewards tasted of it, and dissimulated his ambition. This he did so well that the timid Count of Vertus became a byword and a laugh

Valentine was now his only heir, for during the first eight years of their marriage Caterina Visconti had no children. Valentine was fifteen years old, of an age to be dowered and married. Her father, however, kept her at home with him, teaching her many things-too much, some people said, for they thought her as wise as Medea. She could invent posies; she could read not only Italian books, but Latin, French, and German. Into whatever court she might hereafter marry, she would be not only the daughter of the Duke of Milan, but his diplomatic agent. I do not know if she could speak English, but in those years of warfare the English were often at Milan, and Valentine when a little girl had seen (a brilliant, sudden vision) her English uncle of Clarence, who had died so strangely at Alba, and was buried at Pavia. She was a scholarly maiden, possessing of her own no less than eleven books; more than her grandfather, King John, had ever owned in his royal library at Paris. And she could write as well as read- -a clear, excellent hand, of which the signature still exists in the Paris archives. Froissart in later days remarked on the frequent letters that she wrote to her father, "Madame Valentine wrote him all she knew.".

He had plotted so well that one sole death secured this change. On the 6th of May, 1385, Giangaleazzo had secured the

his dilettissima amante to the castle of Trezzo. Giangaleazzo, no less skilled in poisons than his father, had him poisoned there, and buried him in Milan in a sepulchre of splendid marble. He then caused himself to be proclaimed sole lord of Lombardy. If any questioned his proceedings, he could produce the investiture of Wenzel, granting him absolute authority and final judgment. The children of Bernabò were stupefied and did not rebel; most of the sons went to fight in the ranks. of Sir John Hawkwood; and the people of Milan hailed the Count of Vertus as a deliverer. He taxed them heavily, indeed, but without disorder; and his police were so excellent he used to smile and say, "I am the only robber in all my provinces." Giangaleazzo was now master of a great domain, immensely rich, three-and-thirty. He meant to go far. In 1386 he sent to Pope Urban, demanding the title of king of Italy.

I do not think she was beautiful, for not to be secure in Milan. While his guests a record of the fact remains, but certainly rode on triumphantly to famine and disasshe was beautifully attired. The catalogue ter, the Count of Vertus elaborated his of her gala dresses is a thing to wonder plan. When the king of Sicily, wrapped on: scarlet, and silver, and cloth of gold, in a remnant of homespun daubed with and rich embroidery; cloths of peacock painted yellow lilies, lay dead in his ungreen and mulberry color; tissues of conquered kingdom, defeated in his grave netted pearls. And she had as many at Bari, Giangaleazzo Visconti ruled supearls, diamonds, sapphires, and balass- preme in Lombardy. rubies as any princess in a fairy story. She wore them sewn all over her caps, round her girdles, encircling her young throat, and showered broadcast across the bro-person of his uncle, and had sent him with cades and embroidery of her gowns. With all this, at sixteen, and with the subtle sweetness of the natural Lombard grace, it is not necessary to be beautiful. In 1382 some guests came to Milan, who marvelled at the magnificence of these Viscontis, who talked much with Valentine's father, and who spread abroad the tale of his daughter's wisdom and her splendor. They must also have impressed on the mind of this young girl the strength, the beauty, the wealth of France. And they must no less have spurred the silent and vigilant ambition of her father; for in the late May of 1382, along the straight, vine-bordered roads of Lombardy, four thousand men rode together to be the guests of Milan. They were all mounted on beautiful chargers caparisoned in silk and precious metals; they were all clad in suits of burnished armor; light aigrettes floated from their helmets. "They seemed the army of Xerxes," wrote the Monk of St. Denis; "their beasts of burden went slowly under loads of gold and treasure. Those that beheld them, astrologers and prophets, read in the future the records of their fabulous glory." In truth they were a host of heroes. Knights like the Count of Savoy and the Count of Potenza went in the ranks. At their head rode a tall, square-shouldered man, with fair locks beginning to grizzle, and a handsome countenance. He was magnificent in his cloak of woven gold and lilies. This was Louis of Anjou, king of Sicily, setting out for Naples to conquer his new kingdom.

Urban refused, and in future the Ghibelline Count of Vertus confined his requests to the emperor, or else to the anti-pope at Avignon, who asked nothing better than to make himself a party in Italy. But first of all, Giangaleazzo began to conquer his kingdom. Verona, Padua, Pisa, Siena, Perugia, Assisi, Bologna, Spoleto, fell like ninepins before his gathering force. Florence began to tremble. Foreign countries began to talk of this new conqueror, of his force, his wealth, his one young daughter. Clement, the pope of Avignon, among others, perceived that with Anjou in the south and Visconti in the north, a great Gallic party might be formed in Italy. Clement was at once the creature and the patron of the kings of France. In the end of 1386, while the Milanese messengers still were in the saddle arranging a marriage between Valentine and the emperor's brother, suddenly the governor of Vertus arrived at Pavia. the He brought a message from the king of France, the young Charles VI. The king demanded the hand of Valentine for his

A kingdom in Italy! It was the dearest vision of the age. The kingdom of Adria, a dream never realized; the kingdom of Naples, a phantom eluding for two hundred years the eager grasp of France. In the subtle mind of Giangaleazzo Visconti, a third, a vaster kingdom, was already taking shape-a kingdom dead and buried for near five hundred years kingdom of Italy!

But to gain Italy it was first necessary

only brother, Louis, the Duke of Tou- | no sons, or (as actually happened), all his raine.