But what a treat would such a find be, were it genuine! What a psychological treasure would be a peep into the real feelings of such a mind and heart! Did Bianca consider her career to be a triumphant one, successfully achieving the "excelsior" of her ideal by painful but victorious struggle with opposing fortune? Or did she look on herself as the victim of a chain of unfortunate circumstances, entangled in the meshes of a destiny, which drew her fatally on, and irresistibly wrapped its darkening clouds around her. Few recorded careers illustrate so exactly, regularly, and undeviatingly the lessons of the moralist as that of Bianca. No invented story of progress from bad to worse can better exemplify the law that compels evil to generate ever new evil. [Sidenote: "MUST HE BECOME WORSE!"] Thus far, supposing her not to have been guilty of her husband's murder, her ill–doings have not been such as to put her beyond the pale of human sympathies. She fled from a home made unhappy by a negligent father and an unkind step–mother.[169] It was ill–done. Deceived by her husband as to his position in the world, finding herself a prisoner in a miserable cottage, where she was obliged to do the work of a servant (because the poverty of her husband's family was such, that when she was brought home to be fed and lodged, the drudge hitherto kept by them could be no longer fed or lodged),[170] she listened to the seduction of a prince, and left a husband, who was perfectly contented with the arrangement. This was worse; yet far from unpardonable. But now a career of darker crime had to be entered on. Bianca was now the inmate of a court. Virtues and vices there are on a larger scale. "Major rerum nascitur ordo." The interests and passions of despotic princes are dangerous matters to meddle with, mostly leaving stains and scars on the hands and hearts of those concerned in ministering to them. Enough of both, one would think, must have fallen to Bianca's lot. Let us see, then, if we can succeed in looking into her mind, as it must at this period have contemplated her position, taking stock of the gains and losses thus far realised.