Such were the persons upon whom depended the liberty and happiness of Alfieri's lady, the possibility of that high-flown Platonic intercourse which constituted Louis d'Albany's whole happiness, and Alfieri's strongest incentive to glory; a word from them could exile Alfieri and lock the Countess up in a convent. The consequence of this state of things is humiliating to relate, since it shows to what baseness the most high-minded among us may be forced to degrade themselves. Already, during those few days' sojourn in Rome, before his stay in Naples and Mme. d'Albany's release from the Ursuline convent, Alfieri had spent his time running about flattering and wheedling the powers in command (that is to say, the corrupt ministers of the Papacy and their retinue of minions and spies), in order to obtain leave to inhabit the same city as his beloved and to see her from time to time; doing everything, and stooping to everything, he tells us, in order to be tolerated by those priests and priestlets whom he abhorred and despised from the bottom of his heart. "After so many frenzies, and efforts to make myself a free man," he writes, in his autobiography, "I found myself suddenly transformed into a man paying calls, and making bows and fine speeches in Rome, exactly like a candidate on promotion in prelatedom." At this price of bitter humiliation, nay, of something more real than mere humiliation, Alfieri bought the privilege of frequenting the palace of Cardinal York. But it was a privilege for which you could not pay once and for all; its price was a black-mail of humbugging, and wheedling, and dirt-eating.