The circumstances which attended this extraordinary action, the privacy with which it was concerted, the resolution with which it was executed, the openness of confession, the contempt of punishment, and, above all, the execrable character of the monster who was the subject of it, have taken off so much of the horror generally felt at an act of assassination, that the name of Charlotte Corday is generally pronounced with respect and a great degree of admiration. * * * * * GRAMMATICAL WITTICISM.--“Bobby, what’s steam?” “Boiling water.” “That’s right. Compare it.” “Positive, _boil_; comparative, _boiler_; superlative, _burst_.” Conjugal Affection. CHAPTER I. One of the most remarkable instances of conjugal affection is furnished by the story of Victoria Colonna, which I will relate. The Marquis de Colonna was accused by one of the emissaries of the Inquisition, of heresy and treason; and at the instigation of his uncle, Montalbert, who wished to ruin him, through private hatred, Colonna was seized and thrown into a dungeon, his chateau ransacked, and his wife and child were dispossessed of their inheritance. Colonna had been conveyed to the castle of St. Angelo, and this was all that could be heard respecting him. Whether he had been tried and convicted, could not be learned. He was, in short, as dead to the world and all his family and connections, as if he had suffered the usual lot of mortality; and as such occurrences were by no means uncommon in the Italian states during the reign of papal tyranny, Colonna was speedily forgotten by all except his faithful wife, Victoria. Although interdicted by the cruel laws of the Inquisition, and threatened with the denunciations of the spiritual pater, Victoria traversed nightly the walls of the great citadel; sometimes wading up to her knees in the Tiber, when making the circuit of the towers and bastions, listening in the midnight hour for the slightest sigh, or footfall, that might reveal to her the cell in which her beloved husband was immured. But for several months, all her efforts to discover it were unavailing. Yet, nothing daunted by want of success, and feeling no love of life but in her husband’s company, the faithful woman still continued in the fond and anxious hope that Heaven would, at its fitting time, listen to her prayers, and that she should again be blessed with a sight of him so dear to her, or that she should at least become acquainted with his fate.