for twelve days. Her caprice was here shown by giving the costliest
entertainments to her fellow prisoners, who were of all classes from
debtors to bandits, paying their debts, distributing great sums among
the indigent, and singing her most beautiful songs in an enchanting
manner. When she was released she was followed by the grateful tears
and blessings of those she had so lavishly benefited in jail. This
fascinating creature seems all through life to have been good on impulse
and bad on principle. Three years after this Gabrielli was singing in
Parma, where she made a speedy conquest of the Infante, Don Ferdinand.
His boundless wealth condoned the ugliness of his person in the eyes of
the singer, and the lavish income he placed at her disposal gratified
her boundless extravagances, while it did not prevent her from being
gracious to the Infante's many rivals and would-be successors.
Bitter quarrels and recriminations ensued, and the jealous ravings
of Catarina's princely admirer were more than matched by the fierce
sarcasms and shrill clamor of the beautiful virago. One day Don
Ferdinand, justly suspecting her of gross unfaithfulness, assailed
her with unusual fury, to which she replied by terming him a _gobbo
maladetto_ (accursed hunchback). On this the Prince, carried beyond
all control, had her imprisoned on some legal pretext, though Gabrielli
found proofs of love struggling with his anger in the magnificence of
the apartment and luxuriance of the service bestowed on her. But he
strove in vain to make his peace. The offended coquette was implacable,
and disdained alike his excuses and protestations of devotion. One night
she escaped from her prison, scaled the garden-wall, and fled, leaving
her weak and disconsolate lover to cool his sighs in tears of unavailing
regret.

The court of the Semiramis of the North, Catharine II. of Russia, who
strove to expunge the contempt felt for her as a woman by Europe through