much better than my facts warrant. First, we must put aside all
pedantic modern ideas of right and wrong. Right and wrong in a century
of violence and treachery does not exist, least of all for creatures
like Medea. Go preach right and wrong to a tigress, my dear sir! Yet is
there in the world anything nobler than the huge creature, steel when
she springs, velvet when she treads, as she stretches her supple body,
or smooths her beautiful skin, or fastens her strong claws into her
victim?

Yes; I can understand Medea. Fancy a woman of superlative beauty, of
the highest courage and calmness, a woman of many resources, of genius,
brought up by a petty princelet of a father, upon Tacitus and Sallust,
and the tales of the great Malatestas, of Caesar Borgia and
such-like!--a woman whose one passion is conquest and empire--fancy
her, on the eve of being wedded to a man of the power of the Duke of
Stimigliano, claimed, carried off by a small fry of a Pico, locked up
in his hereditary brigand's castle, and having to receive the young
fool's red-hot love as an honor and a necessity! The mere thought of
any violence to such a nature is an abominable outrage; and if Pico
chooses to embrace such a woman at the risk of meeting a sharp piece of
steel in her arms, why, it is a fair bargain. Young hound--or, if you
prefer, young hero--to think to treat a woman like this as if she were
any village wench! Medea marries her Orsini. A marriage, let it be
noted, between an old soldier of fifty and a girl of sixteen. Reflect
what that means: it means that this imperious woman is soon treated
like a chattel, made roughly to understand that her business is to give
the Duke an heir, not advice; that she must never ask "wherefore this
or that?" that she must courtesy before the Duke's counselors, his
captains, his mistresses; that, at the least suspicion of
rebelliousness, she is subject to his foul words and blows; at the