Alfieri, partly from an honourable reluctance to see his lady made the heroine of a public scandal, and partly, no doubt, from the more selfish fear lest a separation from her husband might imply a separation also from her lover, had long persisted in advising the Countess against any extreme measure. Alfieri tells us that with the desire for freedom of speech and writing at the bottom of his act of self-spoliation in his sister's favour, there had mingled a sense also that by breaking all connections with Piedmont, and liberating himself from all temptation of marrying for the sake of his family, he was, in a manner, securing the continuation of his relations with Mme. d'Albany. The Countess's flight from her husband, they both well knew, would in all probability put an end to these relations; the Catholic Church could grant no divorce, and Charles Edward would probably refuse a separation; so that the honour, nay, the life of the fugitive wife would be safe only in a convent, whence Alfieri would be excluded together with Charles Edward. The choice was a hard one to make; the choice between a life of peace and safety, but separated from all that made life dear to her, and a life consoled by the presence of Alfieri, but made wretched and absolutely endangered by the violence of a drunken maniac. But after that frightful night of St. Andrew no choice remained; to remain under the Pretender's roof was equivalent for his wife either to a violent death in another such fit of madness, or to a lingering death from sheer misery and daily terror. The Countess of Albany must leave her husband.