[2]In the first days of December 1780 a certain Mme. Orlandini, a half Irish lady connected with the Jacobite Ormonds, was invited to breakfast at the palace in the Via San Sebastiano. She skilfully led the conversation into a discussion on needle-work, and suggested that the Countess of Albany should go and see the last embroidery produced at the convent of Bianchette, a now long-suppressed establishment in the adjoining Via del Mandorlo. The Countess of Albany ordered her carriage for immediately after breakfast, and the two ladies drove off, accompanied, of course, by Charles Edward, who never permitted his wife to go out without him. Near the convent-gate they met a Mr. Gahagan, an Irish Jacobite and the official _cavaliere servente_ of Mme. Orlandini, who, hearing that they were going to pay a visit to the nuns, offered to accompany them. Gahagan helped out the Countess and Mme. Orlandini, who rapidly ran up the flight of steps leading to the convent door; he then offered his arm to Charles Edward, whose legs were disabled by dropsy. Leaning on Gahagan's arm, the Pretender was slowly making his way up the steps when his companion, looking up, suddenly exclaimed that the two ladies had already entered the convent and that the nuns had stupidly and rudely shut the door in his and the Count of Albany's face. "They will soon have to open," answered Charles Edward, and began to knock violently. Mr. Gahagan doubtless knocked also. But no answer came. At length the door opened, and there appeared behind a grating no less a person than the Lady Abbess, who ceremoniously informed the Count that she was unable to let him in, as his wife had sought an asylum in her convent under the protection of Her Highness the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Sir Horace Mann says that Alfieri, who is not mentioned in the very circumstantial narrative of Dutens, was hanging about the convent, in order to prevent the Pretender, who always carried pistols in his pockets, from committing any violence. This seems extremely unlikely, as the first use to which Charles Edward would naturally have put his pistols would have been shooting Alfieri, for whose murder he immediately offered a thousand sequins. At any rate, raging like a maniac, the discomfited husband went back to his empty house. It would be pretty and pathetic to insert in this part of my narrative a page of half-condemnatory condolence with Charles Edward. But this I find it perfectly impossible to do. Of course, if we call to mind Falkirk and Skye, if we conjure up in our fancy the Prince Charlie who still lived in the thoughts of Flora MacDonald, there is something very frightful in this tragi-comic flight of the Countess of Albany: the slamming of that convent door in his face is the worst injury, the worst injustice, the worst ignominy reserved by fate for the last of the unhappy Stuarts.