It was rumoured in Venice that the beautiful but vicious Lucretia had too readily favoured the addresses of Count Giulio, and that her brother had been rendered both blind and dumb by a present of many thousand sequins. Their amours were the common topic of the day, and ribald improvisitori of the lowest class sang of their intrigues to the rabble on the Bialto, the Piazza of St. Mark, and all the public places of the city. Poor Diomida clasped her hands, and prayed to Heaven for succour when she heard of these things: she was sinking fast, yet still fondly hoped that Giulio might see the error of his ways, and learn to love her as of old. Could the wretched count have beheld his pale and suffering wife during one of her many dreary hours of silent and lonely anguish, his heart, unless lost to every sense of honour, must have been wrung within him: he would have been struck with remorse to behold the misery he had wrought for one so young and so beautiful—so loving and so patient; an angel of heaven, compared with the demon of wickedness to which he had transformed himself. But the count never saw her now. With his cousin the abandoned Lucretia and her equally abandoned brother, or with Elmina la Mandona the most beautiful courtezan in Venice, he lived a life of debauchery and extravagance, till his coffers were drained, his retinue dismissed, his horses sold, and his estates, pictures, libraries, jewels, and plate had all melted away like snow in the sunshine. The grass grew in the stable court, where the stall collars of sixty steeds had rattled in his father’s days; weeds and flowers flourished on the palace-walls without, and spiders spun their webs undisturbed on the gilded columns and gorgeous frescoes within: even the once gay gondola, that bore the crest of his house on its prow, lay unused and rotting in the grand canal. His exhausted finances would not now admit of his giving splendid entertainments to gay beauties at their own houses, or musical fêtes on the moonlit water: he no longer reclined in glittering gondolas, gorgeous with rich hangings, redolent with the perfume of flowers, and ringing with laughter the music of lutes and the voices of Elmina and her companions, as they glided along the winding canals of Venice after every other sound in the city was hushed. After an absence of some months from his home, the count one night returned: but how accompanied? He brought with him Elmina and a troop of her companions, who again filled the once desolate palace with riot and disorder, and penetrating even to the private apartments of the unhappy countess, insulted her so grossly that she rushed out in sorrow and terror into the streets.