from five to ten at night) before I durst leave them together, which I would not do till he had sworn in the most serious manner he would make no future attempt on her life.  I was content with his oath, knowing him to be very devout, and found I was not mistaken.  How the matter was made up between them afterwards I know not; but it is now two years since it happened, and all appearances remaining as if it had never been.  The secret is in very few hands; his brother, being at that time at Brescia, I believe knows nothing of it to this day.  The chambermaid and myself have preserved the strictest silence, and the lady retains the satisfaction of insulting all her acquaintance on the foundation of a spotless character, that only she can boast in the parish, where she is most heartily hated, from these airs of impertinent virtue, and another very essential reason, being the best dressed woman among them, though one of the plainest in her figure.

“The discretion of the chambermaid in fetching me, which possibly saved her mistress’s life, and her taciturnity since, I fancy appear very remarkable to you, and is what would certainly never happen in England.  The first part of her behaviour deserves great praise; coming of her own accord, and inventing so decent an excuse for her admittance:  but her silence may be attributed to her knowing very well that any servant that presumes to talk of his master will most certainly be incapable of talking at all in a short time, their lives being entirely in the power of their superiors:  I do not mean by law but by custom, which has full as much force.  If one of them was killed, it would either never be inquired into at all, or very slightly passed over; yet it seldom happens, and I know no instance of it, which I think is owing to the great submission of domestics, who are sensible of their dependence, and the national temper not being hasty, and never inflamed by wine, drunkenness being a vice abandoned to the vulgar, and spoke of with greater detestation than murder, which is mentioned with as little concern as a drinking-bout in England, and is almost as frequent.  It was extreme shocking to me at my first coming, and still gives me a sort of horror, though custom has in some degree familiarised it to my imagination.  Robbery would be pursued with great vivacity, and punished with the utmost rigour, therefore is very rare, though stealing is in daily practice; but as all the peasants are suffered the use of fire-arms, the slightest provocation is sufficient to shoot, and they see one of their own species lie dead before them with as little remorse as a hare or a partridge, and, when revenge spurs them on, with much more pleasure.  A dissertation on this subject would engage me in a discourse not proper for the post.”

Lady Mary, being a prolific letter-writer, came under the suspicions of the Italian authorities, who carefully examined the correspondence—­a fact that was only by a chance conversation revealed to her.  “I think I now know why our correspondence is so miserably interrupted, and so many of my letters lost to and from England,” she wrote to her husband in October, 1753; “but I am no happier in the discovery than a man who has found out his complaints proceed from a stone in the kidneys; I know the cause, but am entirely ignorant of the remedy, and must suffer my uneasiness with what patience I can.”