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This page intentionally left blank
 B R I E F C O N T E N T S

Preface  xvii

PART I The Beginnings   1

Chapter 1 The Science of Human Development   3
Chapter 2 Theories of Development   35
Chapter 3 Heredity and Environment  67
Chapter 4 Prenatal Development and Birth   93

PART II The First Two Years   125

Chapter 5 The First Two Years: Biosocial Development   127
Chapter 6 The First Two Years: Cognitive Development   155
Chapter 7 The First Two Years: Psychosocial Development   181

PART III Early Childhood   213

Chapter 8 Early Childhood: Biosocial Development   215
Chapter 9 Early Childhood: Cognitive Development   245
Chapter 10 Early Childhood: Psychosocial Development   275

PART IV Middle Childhood   307

Chapter 11 Middle Childhood: Biosocial Development   309
Chapter 12 Middle Childhood: Cognitive Development   339
Chapter 13 Middle Childhood: Psychosocial Development   367

PART V Adolescence   399

Chapter 14 Adolescence: Biosocial Development   401
Chapter 15 Adolescence: Cognitive Development   429
Chapter 16 Adolescence: Psychosocial Development   457

vii
 B R I E F C O N T E N T S

PART VI Emerging Adulthood   489

Chapter 17 Emerging Adulthood: Biosocial Development  491
Chapter 18 Emerging Adulthood: Cognitive Development  517
Chapter 19 Emerging Adulthood: Psychosocial Development  543

PART VII Adulthood   573

Chapter 20 Adulthood: Biosocial Development   575
Chapter 21 Adulthood: Cognitive Development   603
Chapter 22 Adulthood: Psychosocial Development   631

PART VIII Late Adulthood   665

Chapter 23 Late Adulthood: Biosocial Development  667
Chapter 24 Late Adulthood: Cognitive Development  699
Chapter 25 Late Adulthood: Psychosocial Development  729

Epilogue Death and Dying  760

Appendix A Supplemental Charts, Graphs, and Tables   A-1
Appendix B More About Research Methods  B-1

Glossary  G-1
References  R-1
Name Index  NI-1
Subject Index  SI-1

viii
 C O N T E N T S

Preface xvii Cognitive Theory: Piaget and Information Processing 45

Comparing Grand Theories 48
opposing perspectives: Toilet Training—How and
When? 50

Newer Theories 51
Sociocultural Theory: Vygotsky and Beyond 52
The Universal Perspective: Humanism and
PA RT I Evolutionary Theory 55
a view from science: If Your Mate Were Unfaithful 60
The Beginnings 1 What Theories Contribute 62

Chapter 1 The Science of Human Chapter 3 Heredity and

Development 3 Environment 67
Understanding How and Why 4 The Genetic Code 68
The Scientific Method 4 What Genes Are 68
The Nature–Nurture Debate 5 Variations 69
The Life-Span Perspective 5 The Beginnings of Life 70
Development Is Multidirectional 6 Matching Genes 70
Development Is Multicontextual 7 Male or Female? 70
Development Is Multicultural 11 New Cells, New Functions 71
opposing perspectives: Using the Word
opposing perspectives: Too Many Boys? 71
Race 15
Twins 73
Development Is Multidisciplinary 16
Assisted Reproduction 75
Development Is Plastic 19
a case to study: David 20 From Genotype to Phenotype 77
Epigenetics 77
Using the Scientific Method 22 Gene–Gene Interactions 78
Observation 22
Nature and Nurture 81
The Experiment 24
Alcoholism 82
The Survey 24
Nearsightedness 82
Studying Development over the Life Span 25
Practical Applications 83
Cautions and Challenges from Science 28 Chromosomal and Genetic Problems 84
Correlation and Causation 29
Not Exactly 46 84
Ethics 29
Gene Disorders 85
What Should We Study? 31
Genetic Counseling and Testing 87

Chapter 2 Theories of Development 35 Chapter 4 Prenatal

What Theories Do 35 Development
Questions and Answers 36 and Birth 93
Facts and Norms 37
Prenatal Development 94
Grand Theories 39 Germinal: The First 14 Days 94
Psychoanalytic Theory: Embryo: From the Third Through the
Freud and Erikson 39 Eighth Week 95
Behaviorism: Conditioning and Fetus: From the Ninth Week Until Birth 96
Social Learning 42

ix
 Birth 99 Chapter 6 The First Two Years: Cognitive
The Newborn’s First Minutes 101 Development 155
Medical Assistance 101
Alternatives to Hospital Technology 103 Sensorimotor Intelligence 155
Stages One and Two: Primary
Problems and Solutions 105 Circular Reactions 156
Harmful Substances 105 Stages Three and Four: Secondary
Risk Analysis 106 Circular Reactions 157
Applying the Research 108 Stages Five and Six: Tertiary
opposing perspectives: “What Do People Circular Reactions 159
Live to Do?” 112 Piaget and Modern Research 160
Low Birthweight 113
Complications During Birth 116
Information Processing 162
Affordances 163
The New Family 116 Memory 165
The Newborn 116
New Fathers 117
Language: What Develops in the
First Two Years? 168
New Mothers 119
The Universal Sequence 168
Parental Alliance 120
First Words 170
Bonding 120
Cultural Differences 171
Theories of Language Learning 172
opposing perspectives: Language and Video 174

Chapter 7 The First Two Years:

Psychosocial
Development 181
Emotional Development 181
PA RT I I Early Emotions 182

The First Two Years 125 Toddlers’ Emotions 183

Brain and Emotions 185

Growth of the Brain 185
Chapter 5 The First Two Years: Temperament 187
Biosocial Development 127
The Development of Social
Growth in Infancy 127 Bonds 189
Body Size 128 Synchrony 189
Brain Growth 129 Attachment 190
a view from science: Face Recognition 134 Insecure Attachment and the Social Setting 195
Sleep 135 Social Referencing 197
opposing perspectives: Where Should Fathers as Social Partners 197
Babies Sleep? 135
Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development 199
Perceiving and Moving 137 Psychoanalytic Theory 199
The Senses 137 Behaviorism 200
Motor Skills 140 opposing perspectives: Proximal and Distal
Dynamic Sensory-Motor Systems 142 Parenting 201
Cognitive Theory 202
Surving in Good Health 142
Humanism 203
Better Days Ahead 143
Evolutionary Theory 204
Immunization 144
Infant Day Care 205
Nutrition 145
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome 149

x
 a view from science: Research Report:
Early Childhood and STEM 251
Children’s Theories 252
Brain and Context 254

Language Learning 256

A Sensitive Time 256
The Vocabulary Explosion 257
Learning Two Languages 260
PA RT I I I Early-Childhood Education 262

Early Childhood 213 Homes and Schools 262

Child-Centered Programs 263
Teacher-Directed Programs 265
Chapter 8 Early Childhood: Long-Term Gains from Intensive Programs 269
Biosocial Development 215
Body Changes 215 Chapter 10 Early Childhood:
Growth Patterns 215 Psychosocial
Nutrition 216 Development 275
Hazards of “Just Right” 218 Emotional Development 275
Brain Development 219 Initiative Versus Guilt 276
Speed of Thought 220 Motivation 277
The Brain’s Connected Culture and Emotional Control 278
Hemispheres 220 Seeking Emotional Balance 279
Emotions and the Brain 224 a view from science: Sex Differences in
Emotional Regulation 280
Improving Motor Skills 227
Gross Motor Skills 227 Play 280
a view from science: Eliminating Lead 230 Playmates 282
Fine Motor Skills 232 Culture and Cohort 282
Artistic Expression 232 Active Play 283

Injuries and Abuse 233 Challenges for Caregivers 287

Avoidable Injury 233 Caregiving Styles 287
Prevention 235 Cultural Variations 289
Child Maltreatment 236 Teaching Children to Be Boys or Girls 290
Three Levels of Prevention, Again 240 Moral Development 295
Nature and Nurture 295
Chapter 9 Early Childhood: Empathy and Antipathy 296
Cognitive Development 245 Discipline 298
opposing perspectives: Is Spanking Okay? 301
Thinking During Early Childhood 245
Piaget: Preoperational
Thought 245
a case to study: Stones in
the Belly 247
Vygotsky: Social Learning 249

xi
 Teaching and Learning 353
International Schooling 353
In the United States 358
Choices and Complications 361

Chapter 13 Middle Childhood:

Psychosocial
Development 367
The Nature of the Child 367
PA RT I V Industry and Inferiority 368

Middle Childhood 307 Self-Concept 368

Culture and Self-Esteem 369
Resilience and Stress 370
Chapter 11 Middle Childhood: Families and Children 373
Biosocial Development 309 Shared and Nonshared
Environments 373
A Healthy Time 309
a view from science: “I Always
Slower Growth, Greater Strength 310
Dressed One in Blue Stuff . . .” 374
Physical Activity 311
Family Function and Family Structure 374
Health Problems in Middle Childhood 313 Connecting Family Structure and Function 376
Childhood Obesity 313 a case to study: How Hard Is It to Be a Kid? 380
a view from science: What Contributes to Family Trouble 381
Childhood Obesity? 315 a view from science: Divorce 381
Asthma 317
The Peer Group 384
Brain Development 318 The Culture of Children 384
Coordinating Connections 318 Friendships 385
Measuring the Mind 320 Popular and Unpopular Children 385
Bullies and Victims 386
Children with Special Needs 323
Causes and Consequences 324 Children’s Moral Values 389
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder 325 Moral Reasoning 389
a case to study: Lynda Is Getting Worse 327 What Children Value 391
Specific Learning Disorders 328
Autism Spectrum Disorder 329
Special Education 331
Gifted and Talented 333 PA RT V

Chapter 12 M
 iddle Childhood: Adolescence 399
Cognitive Development 339
Building on Theory 339 Chapter 14 Adolescence:
Piaget and School-Age Children 339 Biosocial Development 401
Vygotsky and School-Age Children 341
Puberty Begins 401
Information Processing 343
Unseen Beginnings 402
a view from science:
opposing perspectives: Algebra at
Balls Rolling Down 347
7 a.m.? Get Real 405
Language 348 Age and Puberty 406
Vocabulary 348 a view from science: Stress and
Differences in Language Learning 350 Puberty 409
a case to study: Two Immigrants 352 Too Early, Too Late 409

xii
Growth and Nutrition 411 Peer Power 466
Growing Bigger and Stronger 411 Peers and Parents 467
Diet Deficiencies 413 Peer Pressure 467
Eating Disorders 414 Romance 469
Sex Education 471
Brain Development 416
A Need for Caution 416 Sadness and Anger 473
a case to study: “What Were You Thinking?” 417 Depression 473
Benefits of Adolescent Brain Development 418 Delinquency and Defiance 476
opposing perspectives:
Sexual Maturation 419
Teenage Rage: Necessary? 476
Sexual Characteristics 419
Sexual Activity 420 Drug Use and Abuse 478
Problems with Adolescent Sex 422 Variations in Drug Use 479
Harm from Drugs 480
Preventing Drug Abuse:
Chapter 15 Adolescence: What Works? 481
Cognitive Development 429
Logic and Self 430
Egocentrism 430
Formal Operational
Thought 431

Two Modes of Thinking 434

Intuition Versus Analysis 436
Dual Processing and the
Brain 438 PA RT V I
Digital Natives 440
Technology and Cognition 441
Emerging Adulthood 489
A New Addiction? 441
Cyber Danger 442 Chapter 17 Emerging Adulthood:
Biosocial Development 491
Teaching and Learning 444
Definitions and Facts 444 Growth and Strength 491
Middle School 445 Strong and Active Bodies 491
a case to study: James, the High-Achieving a view from science: Ages and Stages 493
Dropout 446 Bodies in Balance 493
High School 448 Staying Healthy 497
opposing perspectives: Testing 449
Sexual Activity 500
Then and Now 500
Chapter 16 Adolescence: Opinions and Problems 501
Psychosocial Psychopathology 503
Development 457 Multiple Stresses of Emerging Adults 503
Identity 457 Mood Disorders 504
Not Yet Achieved 458 Anxiety Disorders 505
Four Arenas of Identity Schizophrenia 506
Formation 459
Taking Risks 507
Relationships with Adults 462 opposing perspectives: Brave or Foolish? 509
Parents 462 Drug Abuse 510
a view from science: Parents, Social Norms 511
Genes, and Risks 465 Implications of Risks and Norms 513
Other Adults 465

xiii
 Chapter 18 Emerging Adulthood: Outward Appearance 577
Cognitive Development 517 Sense Organs 579

Postformal Thought 517 The Sexual-Reproductive

The Practical and the Personal: System 580
A Fifth Stage? 518 Contraception 580
Combining Subjective and Sexual Responsiveness 581
Objective Thought 521 Fertility 582
Cognitive Flexibility 522 Menopause 584
Countering Stereotypes 523 Health Habits and Age 586
Dialectical Thought 525 Drug Abuse 586
Morals and Religion 528 Nutrition 589
Which Era? What Place? 529 Inactivity 592
Dilemmas for Emerging Adults 529 a view from science: A Habit Is Hard to Break 593
Stages of Faith 531 Measuring Health 594
Cognitive Growth and Higher Education 532 Mortality 594
The Effects of College 532 Morbidity 596
a case to study: College Advancing Thought 535 Disability 596
Changes in the College Context 535 Vitality 597
Evaluating the Changes 538 Correlating Income and Health 598

Chapter 19 Emerging Adulthood: Chapter 21 Adulthood:

Psychosocial Development 543 Cognitive Development 603
Continuity and Change 543 What Is Intelligence? 603
Identity Achieved 544 Research on Age and Intelligence 604
Personality in Emerging Adulthood 549 Cross-Sequential Research 606

Intimacy 551 Components of Intelligence:

Friendship 551 Many and Varied 608
The Dimensions of Love 553 Two Clusters of Intelligence 608
opposing perspectives: Cohabitation 557
Three Forms of Intelligence 610
a case to study: My Daughters and Me 560
Age and Culture 612
opposing perspectives: What Makes
What Makes Relationships Succeed? 560
a Good Parent? 613
Conflict 561
Selective Gains and Losses 615
Emerging Adults and Their Parents 564
Accumulating Stressors 615
Linked Lives 564
a case to study: Coping with Katrina 619
Financial Support 565
Selective Optimization with Compensation 620
Expert Cognition 621

Chapter 22 Adulthood:
PA RT V I I
Psychosocial
Adulthood 573 Development 631
Personality Development in
Adulthood 631
Chapter 20 Adulthood: Theories of Adult Personality 631
Biosocial Development 575 Personality Traits 634
Senescence 576 opposing perspectives:
The Experience of Aging 576 Local Context Versus Genes 636
The Aging Brain 577

xiv
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Intimacy: Friends and Family 637 Chapter 24 Late Adulthood:
Friends and Acquaintances 638 Cognitive Development 699
Family Bonds 639
The Aging Brain 700
Intimacy: Romantic Partners 641 New Brain Cells 700
Marriage and Happiness 641 Senescence and the Brain 701
Partnerships over the Years 642
Gay and Lesbian Partners 644 Information Processing After Age 65 703
Divorce and Remarriage 644 Input 703
Memory 704
Generativity 646 Control Processes 705
Parenthood 646 a view from science: Cool Thoughts and
Caregiving 651 Hot Hands 705
Employment 654 Output 706
a view from science: opposing perspectives: How to Measure Output 708
Accommodating
Diversity 656 Neurocognitive Disorders 709
The Ageism of Words 709
Mild and Major Impairment 710
Prevalence of NCD 710
Preventing Impairment 714
PA RT V I I I
Reversible Neurocognitive Disorder? 716

Late Adulthood 665 a case to study: Too Many Drugs or Too Few? 718

New Cognitive Development 719

Chapter 23 Biosocial Development: Erikson and Maslow 719
Learning Late in Life 719
Late Adulthood 667
Aesthetic Sense and Creativity 721
Prejudice and Predictions 667 Wisdom 723
Believing the Stereotype 668
a view from science:
When You Think of Old People . . . 669 Chapter 25 Late Adulthood 729
The Demographic Shift 673 Theories of Late Adulthood 730
Selective Optimization with Compensation 676 Self Theories 730
Personal Compensation: Sex 676 opposing perspectives: Too Sweet or
a case to study: Should Older Couples Too Sad? 733
Have More Sex? 677 Stratification Theories 734
Social Compensation: Driving 678 Activities in Late Adulthood 737
Technological Compensation: The Senses 681 Working 737
Compensation for the Brain 682 Home Sweet Home 739
Aging and Disease 684 Religious Involvement 742
Primary and Secondary Aging 684 Political Activism 742
Compression of Morbidity 686 Friends and Relatives 743
Theories of Aging 688 Long-Term Partnerships 744
Wear and Tear 689 Relationships with Younger Generations 744
Genetic Theories 689 Friendship 748
Cellular Aging 690 The Frail Elderly 749
The Centenarians 693 Activities of Daily Life 750
Far from Modern Life and Times 693 a case to study: Preventing Frailty 751
Maximum Life Expectancy 694 Caring for the Frail Elderly 752

xv
 Epilogue 760 Affirmation of Life 778
Grief 778
Death and Hope 761 Mourning 780
Cultures, Epochs, and Death 761 Diversity of Reactions 783
Understanding Death Throughout Practical Applications 783
the Life Span 763
a view from science: Resilience After a Death 784
Near-Death Experiences 767

Choices in Dying 768 Glossary  G-1

A Good Death 768 References  R-1
Better Ways to Die 770
Name Index  NI-1
Ethical Issues 771
opposing perspectives: The “Right to Die”? 775
Subject Index  SI-1
Advance Directives 776

xvi
Preface

M
y grandson, Asa, is in early childhood. He sees the world in opposites:
male/female, child/grown-up, good guys/ bad guys. He considers himself
one of the good guys, destroying the bad guys in his active imagination,
and in karate kicks in the air.
Oscar, his father, knows better. He asked me if Asa really believes there are
good guys and bad guys, or is that just a cliché. I said that most young children
believe quite simple opposites.
Undeterred, Oscar told Asa that he knows some adults who were once bad guys
but became good guys.
“No,” Asa insisted. “That never happens.”
Asa is mistaken. As he matures, his body will grow taller but become less
active, and his mind will appreciate the development of human behavior as life
goes on. This book describes how our thoughts and actions change over the life-
span, including that almost nothing “never happens” as humans grow older.
Oscar is not alone in realizing that people change. Many common sayings
affirm development over time: People “turn over a new leaf,” are “born-again”;
parents are granted a “do-over” when they become grandparents; today is “the first

SOURCE: WORTH PUBLISHERS

day of the rest of your life.” Adults also recognize that the past never disappears;
we say, “The apple does not fall far from the tree,” and many other adages that
stress past influences.
The complexity, the twists and turns, the endless variety of the human experi-
ence at every age is fascinating to me, which is why I wrote this book. We all have
Pondering My grandson, Asa, looks
echoes of Asa in us: We want life to be simple, for people to be good guys. But life thoughtfully at his father, Oscar.
is not simple. Learning about human growth helps everyone respond to life’s varia-
tions and influences, not with imaginary kicks but with wise responses. Knowledge
does that. In a vivid example, Stephen Pinker (2011) finds that humans kill each
other less now than they did in previous centuries; he cites education as one reason.
Education occurs in hundreds of ways. This textbook is only one of them, an aid
to understanding the complexity of your life, my life, and the lives of all the esti-
mated 18 billion humans alive now or who once lived. Nonetheless, although life
experiences and thousands of other books contribute to our education, writing this
text is my contribution and studying it is yours: Together we might learn how to limit
the bad and increase the good in each of us as time goes on.

New Material
Every year, scientists discover and explain more concepts and research. The best
of these are integrated into the text, including hundreds of new references on
many topics—among them the genetics of delinquency, infant nutrition, bipolar
and autistic spectrum disorders, attachment over the life span, high-stakes test-
ing, drug use and drug addiction, brain changes throughout adulthood, and ways
to die. Cognizant of the interdisciplinary nature of human development, I reflect
recent research in biology, sociology, education, anthropology, political science,
and more—as well as my home discipline, psychology.

xvii
 xviii  Preface

SOURCE: MARK BOWDEN/GETTY IMAGES

Compare These with Those These children
seem ideal for cross-sectional research—
they are school children of both sexes and
many ethnicities. Their only difference seems
to be age, so a study might conclude that
6-year-olds raise their hands.

Genetics and social contexts are noted throughout. The variations and
hazards of infant day care and preschool education are described; emerging
adulthood is further explained in a trio of chapters; the blurry boundaries of
adulthood are stressed; the various manifestations, treatments, and preven-
tion of neurocognitive disorders (not just Alzheimer disease) are discussed; and
much more.

New Pedagogical Aids

This edition incorporates learning objectives at the beginning of each
chapter: The “What Will You Know?” questions indicate important
concepts for students to focus on. There is also a new element at the
SOURCE: VAVA VLADIMIR JOVANOVIC/SHUTTERSTOCK

end of each chapter: The “What Have You Learned?” questions help
students assess their learning in more detail. Some further explana-
tion follows.

Learning Objectives
Much of what students learn from this course is a matter of attitude,
approach, and perspective—all hard to quantify. In addition, there
Success At 6 months, she is finally able are specific learning objectives, which supplement the key terms that
to grab her toes. From a developmental should also be learned. For the first time in this edition, two sets of objectives
­perspective, this achievement is as signifi- are listed for each chapter. The first set (“What Will You Know?”), asked at the
cant as walking, as it requires coordination
of feet and fingers. Note her expression of
beginning of each chapter, lists the general ideas that students might remember
determination and concentration. and apply lifelong. At the end of each chapter are more specific learning objec-
tives (“What Have You Learned?”) that connect to each major heading within that
chapter.
Ideally, students answer the learning objective questions in sentences, with
specifics that demonstrate knowledge. Some items on the new lists are straightfor-
ward, requiring only close attention to the chapter content. Others require com-
parisons, implications, or evaluations.
 Preface  xix

New Opposing Perspectives Boxed Feature and

Updated A View from Science and A Case to
Study Features
We all need to develop our critical thinking skills. Virtually every page of this
book presents not only facts but also questions with divergent interpretations.
A new boxed feature called Opposing Perspectives appears in this edition of The
Developing Person Through the Life Span for the first time. This box focuses on
exciting and controversial topics in development—from prenatal sex selection to
the right to die. These high-interest sections appear in most chapters and provide
information on both sides of an issue so that students can practice weighing evi-
dence, assessing arguments, and coming to their own conclusions.
In addition, the boxes titled A View from Science, which explain surprising
insights from recent scientific research, and A Case to Study, which illustrate
developmental issues through the story of specific individuals, have been exten-
sively updated. All these new features are included in the table of contents.

Visualizing Development
Also new to this edition are full-page illustrations of key topics in development.
Every chapter now includes an infographic display of data on key issues ranging
from the biology of twin births to the economic benefits of a college degree to the
range of venues in which elders spend their last years. Many of these infographics
combine global statistics, maps, charts, and photographs. Working closely with
noted designer Charles Yuen, I have tried to use this visual display to reinforce and
explain key ideas.

New Child Development and Nursing Career

Appendices
Available online, these new resources link the content of the life-span course to key
student career areas—early childhood development and nursing—by correlating the
Ninth Edition and its test bank to the NAEYC (National Association for the Education
of Young Children) preparation goals and the NCLEX (nursing) licensure exams.

Content Changes to the Ninth Edition

Life-span development, like all sciences, builds on past learning. Many
facts and concepts are scaffolds that remain strong over time: ages and
stages, norms and variations, dangers and diversities, classic theories
and fascinating applications. However, the study of development is con-
tinually changed by discoveries and experiences, so no paragraph in this
SOURCE: VIKRAM RAGHUVANSHI/GETTY IMAGES
ninth edition is exactly what it was in the eighth edition, much less the
first. Some major revisions have been made, and hundreds of new exam-
ples are cited. Highlights of this updating appear below.
Part I: The Beginnings
1. The Science of Human Development
n A new chapter opener focuses on Kathleen Berger’s (embarrassing)
experience at the birth of her grandson, Caleb.
Before Words The New York infant interpret-
n Comprehensive explanation of the difference-equals-deficit error is used ing a smile is doing what babies do: trying to
to highlight the importance of a multicultural approach in developmental understand communications long before they
­science. are able to talk.
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content Scribd suggests to you:
beings without our own consent?” Our bodies are not created by
God and we are not responsible to Him for their errors. They are the
expressions of our Eternal souls—their own expressions at their own
desire as a modus vivendi in the world. “How can God need our
action if He is omnipotent? If omnipotent, how tolerant of Evil? If
permitting suffering, sin, and Hell, how then All-loving? If All-loving,
how Just?” These questions are all answered by the mystical
conception of God as a Divine Passivity, an unconscious Fund of
Existence. All that is impossible and absurd in the theories of the
Mystics is caused by adapting them to religious ideas. They had to
explain the immortality of the soul, ... and they spoke of eternal
absorption into an Infinite Nothing. They had to explain a good and
omnipotent God creating an evil and impotent humanity. They made
the one nothing and the other nothing.
 The Schism.

In the year 1377 the Pope was at Avignon. Seventy years ago a
Pope had come there, as the guest of the Count of Provence, in
order to arrange with the King of France the iniquitous extermination
of the Templars. He had come to Avignon in the hour of Papal
triumph; for in the tragic ruin of the Hohenstaufens, the prestige of
the empire was destroyed at last. But in reality this fatal victory had
left the Pope no longer the arbiter between France and Germany,
but the dependent of the sole surviving Power. The attraction of
successful France drew the Pope from Rome to Avignon.
At Rome the Pope had left his Vatican, his authority, his tradition.
At Avignon, a chance guest, hastily lodged in the Dominican
monastery, he was little better than the Political Agent of Philippe-le-
Bel. Yet he showed no hurry to return. Clement was a Frenchman of
the South, a Gascon, at home in Provence but cruelly expatriated
among the dissensions, the enthusiasms, the treacheries of foreign
Italy. Year after year found him still at Avignon, and there he died in
the year 1315. His successor, John XXI. or XXII., was another
Gascon; and Benedict XII. (1334-1342) and Clement VI. (1342-
1352) were Frenchmen also. They built a mighty palace at Avignon,
immense, with huge square towers, and walls—four metres thick—
scarce broken by the rare small pointed windows rearing their
colossal strength high into the air. The great golden-brown palace
was less of a palace than a prison, less of a cloister than a castle. It
was, in fact, a baron’s fortress of the feudal age; for the Pope had
almost forgotten that he was Pope of Rome; he was the Count of
Venaissin and Avignon.
 He was rich; he was a great lord; he lived luxuriously within those
frowning gates. His rooms were full of money-brokers, weighing and
counting out their heaps of gold; and there arose no Christ to drive
them from the Temple. France, England, Germany, Italy, groaned in
vain beneath the exactions of the unscrupulous financial ability that
furnished the Court of Avignon with its soft living, its delicate
manners, its attention to the Arts. In the beautiful house upon
whose walls Simone Memmi had painted a host of his sweet and
melancholy angels, men forgot the trumpet clang of the name of
Hildebrand; and when the officers of Clement VI. dared to
remonstrate with him upon the Oriental magnificence of his palace,
deprecating an expenditure beyond that of any of his predecessors
—“None of my predecessors knew how to be a Pope,” replied the
Count of Venaissin. The Papal ideal had changed.
Yet it would be wrong to regard the Popes at Avignon as Oriental
satraps dreaming away, among enchanted reveries, a life of luxury.
They were above all things French and very French; active, keen,
humane, with a genius for prosperity, a natural quickness for
organization. They had a practical piety, of which they made a good
income, not without an honest expenditure of pains. Their missions
were established in Egypt, India, China, Nubia, Abyssinia, Barbary,
and Morocco. Yet, though so eager to convert the heathen, they
kept no rancour in their hearts against the unconverted. Cruel they
were sometimes, for their age was cruel, but often they were
amazingly humane. John XXII. launched Bull after Bull in defence of
the unhappy Jews, massacred by Christian greed, and the perverted
pity of Christian superstition. “As Jews they are Jews, as men they
are men,” said the Pope. “Abhor their doctrines, respect their lives
and their wealth.” And Clement VI., when France and Germany
tortured and expelled the abominated nation, threw open wide the
gates of Avignon, and at the knees of the Vicar of Christ, he made a
momentary sanctuary for the Wandering Jew.
Clement was followed by Innocent VI., another Frenchman,
equally content with Avignon. When he died it was nearly sixty years
since any Pope had trodden the holy stones of Rome. But his
successor, Urban V., for all his Gallic blood, revolted against the
position of St. Peter as chaplain to the King of France. He saw that
the Church lands in Italy were slipping continually from the Pope’s
control, while Papal vicars established themselves as hereditary
masters of their fiefs, and city after city declared itself with impunity
no longer the vassal of St. Peter, but a free Republic.
In Germany the doctrines of Marsiglio and Occam had enduringly
ruined the prestige of the Pope. For they declared the Bishop of
Rome a simple bishop, subject to the law, subject to the Council,
subject to deposition at the hands of the faithful; his thunders were
pronounced illegitimate and harmless since no priest, but only a
Council General, could excommunicate or even interdict a nation or a
king. In Germany the Reformation had begun, as it was to continue,
upon the lines of theory and dogma; in England it was already a
political revolt, a declaration of national independence. In 1365
England refused to pay the tribute of 1,000 marks which John had
promised to the Pope as to his lawful suzerain. England at that
moment was triumphant. Ten years ago the battle of Poictiers had
secured her hold on France. The French king had died a captive in
the Savoy in London, and Europe was not yet aware that the new
king of France was Charles the Wise.
At that moment, indeed, France, in reality so near the top of the
wheel of fortune, appeared at her lowest. Nations and men forget
how quick that wheel revolves; and the Pope, beholding France his
sole protector against the world, and France the prey of England, felt
himself no longer safe at Avignon. In 1361 a company of freebooters
had defeated the Papal troops at the very gates of the Papal city;
the Pope had bought them off with a ransom, and had redoubled the
fortifications. But he had realized his insecurity. It was evident that
the real interests of the Church demanded the return of the Pope to
Rome.
Urban made a courageous, a heroic effort. He dragged his
reluctant Court of luxurious French Cardinals across the seas to
Rome. But in that black and savage haunt of robbers, the Pope
remembered Avignon too well. He came home at Christmas time in
1379; but it was only to die in the beautiful familiar palace; and, out
of France, the faithful called his death the judgment of the Lord
upon him who looks back from the plough.
A brighter epoch opened for his successor, Gregory XI. The genius
of King Charles and his brothers, the Dukes of Anjou and Burgundy,
had restored the fortunes of France; and Anjou, at any rate, was
aware of the advantage which the House of France might reap from
the partnership of a Pope at Avignon. For the Pope, of course, was a
Frenchman and willing to assist in the triumph of his country, a
triumph he could best assist by remaining at Avignon to further and
inspire the policy of his king. Every tie, indeed, united to detain
Gregory in Provence. He was no ascetic, indifferent to glory or to
comfort; but an affectionate, natural man, loving his ease, loving his
family, loving the land where he was born. At Avignon he dwelt
among his friends, his kinsmen, his father the Comte de Beaufort,
his mother, his four sisters. The stories of his Cardinals could only
add to his own horror of that distant Italy whose language he could
not speak. He was ill, and he dreaded the miasma of Rome; he
needed the comforts of that Court whose luxurious memory should
long survive in France. “You should have come to Europe a few
years ago, before the Schism,” writes the anonymous author of
Maître Jehan de Meun—

“N’a pas longtemps mourût Gregoire

Je te dis que toute la gloire
Du plus hault seigneur terrien
Vers son estat n’estoit plus rien.
Là ne falloit ne pompe ne mise
Que herault sceult à devise,
Richesse du tout surmontant
Tout prince que lors fut vivant.”[5]

Yet it was Gregory the Eleventh who was to restore the Papacy to
Rome.
It was no longer so easy to return as it had been in the days of
Urban. That Pope had not removed to Rome until the energy of Gil
Albornoz had reduced the princes of Italy into submission. But now
Albornoz was dead, and Italy was more than ever tumultuous and
discordant, for the French Governors whom Urban had left behind
him had filled the Papal states with horror of the French Pope.
Petrarch also was dead, whose pen no less than the sword of
Albornoz had been a potent instrument for the return of Urban. The
times were changed, and Italy, who had mourned so long the Papal
tiara fallen from her forehead, was no longer willing to receive it.
After seventy years of exile the Papacy had become a foreign power,
and by many of the Italian princes the restoration of Gregory
seemed little less than a French invasion. Of all the Papal states only
Orvieto, Ancona, Cesano, and Jesi remained true to him. Florence, of
old so faithful to the Church, was now united against her with the
Ghibelline Viscontis of Milan; and the Arch-Guelf clasped with a
mailed hand her new crimson banner written in golden letters with
the one word Libertas.
The Italians seemed as capable of shaking off the Pope as they
had been capable of shaking off the Emperor. Only a few voices still
lamented the exile of St. Peter. Gregory knew very well that the
return to Rome meant strife and bitterness, and that he must re-
enter his dominions bringing in his hand not peace, but a sword.
This prospect inspired him with disgust and fatigue; while every
principle of habit, affection, patriotism, loyalty, and selfish interest
conspired to keep him in Avignon. All this in one scale; but there lay
in the other the conscience of the Pope and the voice that inspired
that conscience. It was the voice of a young Italian nun. Europe,
distracted with wars, perplexed, unguided, heard at last one voice
that proclaimed the will of God, and acknowledged her conscience in
St. Catherine of Siena.
The letters of St. Catherine came frequently to Avignon, and with
them came other letters from the French Governors telling of the
increasing difficulty of keeping together the little that was left of the
patrimony of St. Peter. Gregory became visibly disturbed. His
conscience urged him to return to Rome. In July the Duke of
Anjou[6] came to Avignon to dissuade the Pope from an enterprise
so disastrous, as he believed, to the future of France. Of all the royal
princes Anjou was the one specially concerned with Italian policy. He
was a man handsome, impressive, with a breadth of view and a
force of ambition that made him many followers. This son of St.
Louis could not fail to influence the Pope. He made it harder to go
from Avignon; but the persuading voice of Catherine would not be
stilled. The Pope was ill and afraid, a timid man; his sisters and his
parents clung to him, entreating him to stay; his Cardinals opposed
him; his king commanded: yet on the 13th of September he quitted
Avignon. Evil omens added to the discouragement of his spirit; his
horse stumbled under him at starting, and fearful tempests delayed
him on the sea. But on January 17, 1377, the Pope re-entered Rome.
The seventy years which had made the beauty of Avignon had
ruined Rome. No longer the pilgrims brought her the custom of
foreign countries; the Court of the Vatican no longer gave an
impetus to trade; the prestige of the Pope had ceased to make of
Rome the centre of Europe; and the deserted city had realized her
intrinsic poverty. Thirty years ago Rienzi had proclaimed her a cave
of robbers rather than the abode of decent men. The churches were
in ruins,[7] many of them wholly roofless; and in St. Peter’s and the
Lateran the flocks nibbled the grass of the pavement up to the steps
of the altar. Row after row of ruined dwelling-places gave way to
wild fields and heaths—scars of desolation upon the depopulated
enclosure of Aurelian. If mediæval Rome lay in ruins, the Rome of
antiquity was yet more ruthlessly destroyed, and the temples and
theatres of the pagans were used as a quarry or a limekiln by their
savage and impoverished successors. For with prosperity, peace and
order had deserted Rome. The fierce clans of Colonna and Orsini
terrorized the starved and fever-stricken populace; and there was no
law beyond their tyranny. Murder was frequent, vendetta an
honoured custom, and the Eternal City the shambles of unpunished
bloodshedding.
In such a place decency, quiet, or even safety were naturally
strangers. The Cardinals, unwilling martyrs, mourned day and night
for Avignon. The Pope himself became disenchanted, ungentle, and
embittered. But he was resolved not to quit this odious Italy until the
patrimony of St. Peter was regained. Albornoz was dead, it is true;
but in the Cardinal of the Twelve Apostles the Pope found a spirit no
less militant, resolute and cruel to lead his armies against the
revolted cities and to re-establish in Italy the vanished prestige of
Rome.
Robert of Geneva, Cardinal of the Twelve Apostles, was, like the
Pope himself, a Frenchman of good family and aristocratic prejudice.
His father was the Count of Geneva, his mother Mahault of Auvergne
and Boulogne. In his eyes the revolt of subjects was a crime beyond
excuse; and when, as in the present case, there was added to the
denial of the divine right of sovereigns a heretic apostasy from the
dominion of the Church, his indignation dried the founts of pity in his
heart. The history of his whole life proves the Cardinal to be not
naturally cruel, nor even vindictive; but his campaign in Italy was
terrible. With the Frenchman’s distrust of the Italians, Robert refused
to engage Italian condottieri; he knew that these companies,
changing masters continually, were gentle to the enemy of the
moment, the brother-in-arms of yesterday and to-morrow. The
Cardinal, fiercely in earnest, engaged the Breton Jehan de Malestroit
who had cried, “Where the sun can enter, I can enter!” and the
Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, with his White Company the most
terrible of the day. Supported by these pitiless auxiliaries, Robert of
Geneva quenched in blood the fierce resistance of Florence,
Bologna, Cesena, Faenza, and other rebellious cities. Massacre after
massacre, sack and pillage innumerable marked his progress; but
the voice of the Churchman was never heard to cry for mercy. He
had no admiration for the obstinate courage of the besieged; they
were rebels, and beyond pity. “I will wash my hands in their blood!”
he cried at Bologna and at Cesena there were 5,000 slain. These
things made the name of the young Cardinal an abomination in Italy.
But they secured in one campaign the submission of the Italians.
The laurels of Robert of Geneva still were green when, on March
27, 1378, Gregory the Eleventh died at Anagni. The Pope had been
on the point of returning to Avignon; and the necessity of their
prolonged residence in savage Rome, and the fact that the Conclave
must be held there, fell with the weight of misfortune upon the
impatient Cardinals.
 It was the first Conclave that had been held in Rome for fifty-
seven years, and the Roman populace clamoured in the streets for a
Roman Pope. But among the sixteen Cardinals of the Conclave,
eleven were French. They might easily have carried the necessary
majority of two-thirds had they been of one mind among
themselves; but the hatred of North and South did not merely divide
the French from the Italians; it divided the Frenchmen among
themselves. Gregory and Clement had both been Limousins, and the
majority of the French Cardinals decided to continue this tradition.
The remnant, however—the Gallicans, as they called themselves—
preferred even an Italian to a Limousin; and their spokesman,
Robert of Geneva, made overtures to the Trans-Alpines. The result
was the election of a man of no party, a man who was not even a
Cardinal. Bartolommeo Prignano, Archbishop of Bari, was an Italian;
but he was something more than an Italian; he was a Neapolitan, a
subject of Queen Giovanna, and therefore presumably in favour of
the French. He had lived at Avignon, and was familiar with French
customs and French policy. It was hoped that he might prove a bond
of union. Scarcely was his election accomplished, in haste, amid the
noises of the shouting mob outside, when the impatient Romans
burst into the Conclave, clamouring for a Roman Pope. The Cardinals
dared not confess their choice of a Neapolitan, and in their terror
they lied, imposing on the people the Cardinal of St. Peter’s, a
Roman born. This fraud, together with the constraint put on the
Conclave by the violence of the mob, were a few months later
alleged against the validity of the election of Prignano.
But at first no conscience was troubled by this irregularity. For six
months the Archbishop of Bari wore an undisputed tiara, and Urban
VI. succeeded quietly to Gregory. Urban was zealous for reform,
passionately determined against simony, pure in his life, energetic,
resolute; but virtue has seldom been manifest in so unlovable an
Avatar. The man was a Neapolitan peasant: short, squat, coarse, and
savage. He flung rude words and violent speeches like mud in the
faces of his elegant French Cardinals. “Fool!” “Blockhead!”
“Simoniacal Pharisee!”—such were the hard nails with which he
studded the ever unpalatable word Reform; and one day, had not
Robert of Geneva caught the holy father by the sleeve, he would
have struck a Cardinal in the assembled Consistory.
Robert of Geneva was thirty-six years old; he was tall,
commanding, with a handsome face and fine manners. His
aristocratic urbanity veiled a nature that did not scorn to do and
dare. There could be no greater contrast to the Pope than he, and
he became the idol of the Cardinals, although, in fact, he, the Arch-
Gallican, was the distant cause of the election of Urban. His
reputation for ferocity in battle added a prestige to his pleasant
courtliness: it was he who should have been the Pope! He would not
have kept the College, throughout the sweltering summer, in Rome
where the detested Urban declared that he would live and die.
Something must be done, and at once, for Urban threatened to
create a majority of Italian Cardinals. One by one the Cardinals left
Rome for their health. Their resort was first Anagni, thence they
went to Fondi. It was an open secret in Rome wherefore they found
the air so good there. Urban got wind of their conferences, and on
the 18th of September he created twenty-eight Italian cardinals. Two
days later there was a great ceremony in the church at Fondi. The
French Cardinals announced to the world that at last a legitimate
Pope had been elected in succession to Gregory. He was, of course,
a Frenchman; he was Robert of Geneva; he was Clement VII., the
first Antipope of the great Schism.
The Church was terribly divided by this news—Clement, elected by
all the French, was not repudiated by the Italian Cardinals, who,
playing the waiting game of their nation, remained neutral. Yet the
contest was a contest not of persons, but of nationalities. “The
significance of Urban’s election lay in the fact that it restored the
Papacy to Rome, and freed it from the influence of France.”[8]
Catharine of Siena clearly perceived this significance, and wrote of
Clement, who was to undo her sacred mission, as “a devil in the
shape of man.” In the North of Italy the campaign of Clement in the
previous year persuaded the decimated cities of the truth of this
opinion; but the South was not firm for Urban, and Naples openly
declared herself the champion of his rival. The confusion was not
only in Italy. The Church everywhere was shaken to its foundations.
In many bishoprics there were two bishops;[9] there was a terrible
doubt in the minds of the Faithful, for of the two Popes, one must be
Antichrist, his followers heretics, and consigned to eternal
damnation. It is not too much to say that the authority of the Church
never recovered from this long and terrible questioning. The minds
of the pious turned from the Church to God; Mysticism and heresy
consoled the uncertain; and false prophets were common in the
land.
Confusion in the Church was echoed by confusion in the State.
England, because of the war with France, was passionate for Urban.
The Empire also was for Urban; and Brittany, and all whose hand
was against the French. “France desires not merely the Papacy, but
the universal monarchy of the globe,” wrote Urban to the Emperor.
[10] But among the smaller states France had still her supporters;
Scotland, Savoy, Naples, Leon, and Castile followed in her wake, and
declared for Clement. There was great joy in France. Louis of Anjou,
perhaps the first of European princes to send in his adhesion to the
Antipope, was consoled for the departure of Gregory; and when the
news was brought to the king, he exclaimed, “I am Pope at last!”
But the joy was the joy of princes, not the joy of the people. The
nation mourned the confusion that had fallen on the Church, and the
University of Paris wrapped itself in a melancholy neutrality.

5. Paris: Bib. Nat. Français, 811; No. 7203; “L’Apparicion de Jehan

de Meun.”

6. July 17, 1376.

7. Pastor, “Geschichte der Päpste,” i. 63, after Gregorovius.

8. Creighton, “History of the Papacy,” vol. i. p. 64.

9. Especially in Germany—Mayence, Breslau, Constance, Metz,

Loire, Breslau, Lübeck, &c. See Pastor., op. cit., book ii. p. 108, et
seq.
10. Sept. 6, 1382. Vide Pastor., p. 108.
Valentine Visconti.
 I.
Valentine Visconti, greater than Helen as the cause of battles, was
born in the Abbey of Pavia, in the year 1366. Her grandfather,
Galeazzo Visconti, had left Milan rather suddenly, being ill with gout
and “temendo la severità” of one so skilled in the use of succession-
powders as Bernabò his brother, co-tyrant with him of Lombardy. He
had designed a safe and splendid castle for himself in Pavia. While it
was still unfinished Valentine was born in the hospitable old Certosa
there.[11]
Galeazzo Visconti had taken with him from Milan his wife, Blanche
of Savoy, his little daughter Iolanthe, and his married son
Giangaleazzo, with his wife Isabelle. These last were the parents of
Valentine. When she was born her mother was sixteen and her
father fifteen years of age.[12] At her nativity there were, we are
told, incredible rejoicings; for the pride of Galeazzo Visconti was
gratified by the birth of a grandchild who was no less the grand-
daughter of a King of France.
The mother of Valentine was that little French princess who, six
years ago, had been sold into Lombardy to help to raise the golden
millions of her father’s ransom. John the Good had received for his
daughter the sum of five hundred thousand golden florins, a sort of
inverse marriage portion, the price of a royal alliance. But Galeazzo
had not paid for barren honour only: Isabelle had brought her
husband the county and the title of Vertus in Champagne. Though
the little girl had gone weeping into Italy, her tears were soon dried.
She had left a devastated and ruined country; she came into a land
of sumptuous tyranny, of riches and magnificence. Life was easy at
Milan and at Pavia, where Galeazzo was busied with his new
university, where Giangaleazzo—a timid, intellectual, orderly creature
—spent day after day in his study full of enormous parchment
ledgers, directing the staff of secretaries who copied into them his
accounts, his memoranda, and duplicates of his correspondence.
Priests and friars from the old Certosa, professors of law and
learning from the new college, poets also—the English poet, Master
Geoffrey Chaucer, and the prince of poets himself, Messer Francesco
Petrarca,—learned men like Philippe de Mézières, visitors from so far
away as England, France, or Cyprus—these were the guests of the
palace. Gradually the stately home echoed with children’s voices.
Valentine was born in 1366. One brother grew strong and playful at
her side; another died in babyhood. When the third was born, in
1373, Isabelle died, and a few months afterwards her baby followed
her.
The immense castle of Pavia was very quiet now. Iolanthe, the
girl-widow of the Duke of Clarence, had married, in 1372, the
Marquis of Monferrat. There were only the old Visconti and his wife,
and the studious young Count of Vertus and his two little children. It
was quieter still when, in 1378, Galeazzo Visconti died. He had been
a terrible old man: cruel, unscrupulous, scholarly. It was he who
obtained from the Emperor, Charles IV., in 1361, the privilege to
found the University of Pavia, and he who protected it by an edict
threatening with heavy punishments the Milanese who dared to
study in another school. And he it was, also, who threw alive into a
fiery furnace two priests who came to him on an unwelcome
message; and he who, with his brother Bernabò, had poisoned a
third brother, co-heir and co-tyrant with them in Lombardy. They had
divided his share, Galeazzo taking Piacenza, Pavia, the west to
Novara, and as far as Como in the north; while Bernabò possessed
the rich province of the east. Both ruled alike in Milan. Both should
have been equally powerful. But Galeazzo had left all his share to
the sole Count of Vertus, and he, too, had only one son to follow
him, whereas the signory of Bernabò was strengthened and divided
by eleven turbulent and violent young sons.
Valentine’s father remembered the fate of his uncle. He kept very
quiet, surrounded himself with priests and guards, ate of no dish
before a score of stewards tasted of it, and dissimulated his
ambition. This he did so well that the timid Count of Vertus became
a by-word and a laughing-stock in the house of Bernabò. Although
the young man had taken care to obtain from the Emperor
investitures which conferred upon him absolute authority;[13]
although by his judicious protection of the people he made himself
the desired deliverer of the unhappy Milanese, still Bernabò and his
children could not take their kinsman seriously. And the better to lull
their suspicions, in 1380 the young Count of Vertus came a-courting
to the noisy Castello di Porta Giovio, where Bernabò kept house with
such of his nine-and-twenty children as still remained in Milan. It
was a great riotous house full of voices, full of splendid young men
in armour (Palamedes, Lancilotto, Sagramoro), full of beautiful
women and fair young girls with lovely names (Achiletta, Verde,
Damigella), and not less radiant for their easy familiarity with evil.
One of these dangerous maidens, Caterina, the Count of Vertus took
to be his second wife. In the next year, in 1381, on the 4th of
October, his boy, Astorre, died.
Valentine was now his only heir, for during the first eight years of
their marriage Caterina Visconti had no children. Valentine was
fifteen years old, of an age to be dowered and married. Her father,
however, kept her at home with him, teaching her many things—too
much, some people said, for they thought her as wise as Medea.
She could invent posies; she could read not only Italian books, but
Latin, French, and German. Into whatever court she might hereafter
marry, she would be not only the daughter of the Duke of Milan, but
his diplomatic agent. I do not know if she could speak English, but in
those years of warfare the English were often at Milan, and Valentine
when a little girl had seen (a brilliant, sudden vision) her English
uncle of Clarence, who had died so strangely at Alba, and was
buried at Pavia. She was a scholarly maiden, possessing of her own
no less than eleven books; more than her grandfather, King John,
had ever owned in his royal library at Paris. And she could write as
well as read—a clear, excellent hand, of which the signature still
exists in the Paris archives. Froissart in later days remarked on the
frequent letters that she wrote to her father: “Madame Valentine
wrote him all she knew.”
I do not know if Valentine was beautiful. A line in “Le Pastouralet”
speaks of her as
 “Maret, qui le miex dasoit,”

and mentions the courtesy of “la touse mignotte”—the dainty

dame. This conveys an impression of nothing more positive than
elegance and grace. We can fill up the frame with a couple of
portraits which still exists in the Bibliothèque Nationale: small
grisaille illuminations adorning a manuscript poem[14] in defence of
Valentine. There is nothing very distinctive in either portrait—no
accent of striking personality or resemblance. They represent the
same young and slender woman, rather tall, with a long neck and
slim arms, and a bust both full and delicate. The head is small, the
hair parted from ear to ear across the middle of the head, the back
locks being tied in a Greek knot, the front ones divided again in the
middle and looped in pendant braids above the ear. Under this
severe coiffure we discern a serious gentle placid face—long narrow
eyes, a high forehead, a full mouth with pretty pursed lips; a face
too closely following the mediæval ideal for it to impress us very
strongly as a likeness. Valentine is clothed in a low-cut, tight gown
girdled round the hips, with long, tight sleeves descending to the
knuckles of the slim and delicate hands—over this she wears a very
ample trained surtout, also low in the neck, falling in rich folds to her
feet and buttoned down the front to the hips, where it is sewn
together, but split up at the arms in immense wide sleeve-holes, a
yard long, revealing the under dress. If the young duchess was not
precisely beautiful, yet certainly she was beautifully attired. The
catalogue of her gala-dresses is a thing to wonder on: scarlet, and
silver, and cloth of gold, and rich embroidery; cloths of peacock-
green and mulberry colour; tissues of netted pearls. And she had as
many pearls, diamonds, sapphires, and balass-rubies as any princess
in a fairy-story. She wore them sewn all over her caps, round her
girdles, encircling her young throat, and showered broadcast across
the brocades and embroidery of her gowns. With all this, at sixteen,
and with the subtle sweetness of the natural Lombard grace, it is not
necessary to be beautiful.
 II.
In 1382 certain guests came to Milan, who marvelled at the
magnificence of these Viscontis, who talked much with Valentine’s
father, and who spread abroad the tale of his daughter’s wisdom and
her splendour. They must also have impressed on the mind of this
young girl the strength, the beauty, and the wealth of France. And
they must no less have spurred the silent and vigilant ambition of
her father; for in the late May of 1382, along the roads of Lombardy,
four thousand men rode together to be the guests of Milan. They
were all mounted on beautiful chargers caparisoned in silk and
precious metals; they were all clad in suits of burnished armour;
light aigrettes floated from their helmets. “They seemed the army of
Xerxes,” wrote the Monk of St. Denis; “their beasts of burden went
slowly under loads of gold and treasure. Those that beheld them,
astrologers and prophets, read in the future the records of their
fabulous glory.” In truth, they were a host of heroes. Knights like the
Count of Savoy and the Count of Polenza went in the ranks. At their
head rode a tall, square-shouldered man, with fair locks beginning to
grizzle, and a handsome countenance. He was magnificent in his
cloak of woven gold and lilies. This was Louis of Anjou, King of Sicily,
setting out for Naples to conquer his new kingdom.
A kingdom in Italy! It was the dearest vision of the age. The
kingdom of Adria, a dream never realized; the kingdom of Naples, a
phantom eluding for two hundred years the eager grasp of France.
In the subtle mind of Giangaleazzo Visconti, a third, a vaster
kingdom, was already taking shape—a kingdom dead and buried for
near five hundred years—the kingdom of Italy!
But to gain Italy it was necessary to be secure in Milan. While his
guests rode on triumphantly to famine and disaster, the Count of
Vertus elaborated his plan. When the King of Sicily, wrapped in a
remnant of homespun daubed with painted yellow lilies, lay dead in
his unconquered kingdom, defeated in his grave at Bari,
Giangaleazzo Visconti ruled supreme in Lombardy.
He had plotted so well that one sole death secured this change.
On the 6th of May, 1385, Giangaleazzo, apparently en route for the
shrine of our Lady of Varese, passed by the gates of Milan. His uncle
and his cousins went out to meet him, smiling at the immense guard
which ever attended the timid Hermit of Pavia. But now
Giangaleazzo dropped the mask. In an hour Milan was his, his
cousins his prisoners, and his uncle, with his dilettissima amante,
fast in the Castle of Trezzo. Giangaleazzo, no less skilled in poisons
than his father, had him poisoned there, and buried him in Milan in a
sepulchre of splendid marble. But he showed no wanton cruelty. His
cousins escaped, destitute indeed, but unharmed. No unnecessary
pain attended the murder of the tyrant Bernabò, decently executed
by a well-cooked dish of vegetables. Ambition, not revenge, nor the
blood-mania of his race, was the master passion of the new Lord of
Lombardy. If any questioned his proceedings, he could produce the
investiture of Wenzel, granting him absolute authority and final
judgment. The children of Bernabò were stupefied and did not rebel;
most of the sons went to fight in the ranks of Sir John Hawkwood;
and the people of Milan hailed the Count of Vertus as a deliverer. He
taxed them heavily, indeed, but without disorder; and his police
were so excellent that he used to smile and say, “I am the only
robber in my provinces.” Giangaleazzo was now master of a great
domain, immensely rich, three-and-thirty. He meant to go far. In
1386 he sent to Pope Urban, demanding the title of King of Italy.
Urban refused, and in future the Ghibelline Count of Vertus
addressed his requests to the Emperor, or else to the Anti-Pope at
Avignon, who asked nothing better than to make himself a party in
Italy. But first of all, Giangaleazzo began to conquer his kingdom.
Verona, Padua, Pisa, Siena, Perugia, Assisi, Bologna, Spoleto, fell like
ninepins before his gathering force. Florence began to tremble.
Foreign countries began to talk of this new conqueror, of his force,
his wealth, his one young daughter. Clement the Pope of Avignon,
among others, perceived that with Anjou in the south and Visconti in
the north, a great Gallic party might be formed in Italy. Clement was
at once the creature and the patron of the kings of France. In the
winter of 1386-87, while the Milanese messenger still were in the
saddle arranging a marriage between Valentine and the Emperor’s
brother, suddenly the Governor of Vertus arrived at Pavia. He
brought a message from the King of France, the young Charles VI.
The King demanded the hand of Valentine for his only brother, Louis.
This was an important step. The two first children of the King of
France had died as soon as they were born, and Louis was still the
heir to the Crown. Valentine, six years after her father’s second
marriage, was still his only child. It was current in France that the
Count of Vertus turned to his daughter and said, “When I see you
again, fair daughter, I trust you will be Queen of France.”
 III.
This proposal, which came as a surprise to Europe and almost as
an outrage to the Emperor, was no surprise to the Lord of Milan.
Months before Giangaleazzo had laid his plans. There exists at Paris
in the Archives Nationales (K. 554, No. 7) the summary of a Project
of Marriage between Louis and Valentine, dated the 26th of August,
1386.
It is interesting to note that in this early draft there is no thought
of any possible French claim to Milan. Valentine is dowered with Asti
and its revenue—for which her husband was never to be constrained
to pay homage; she was also to bring her husband 450,000 golden
florins, and to come to him “bien joyellée et aornée de joyaulx.” And,
only after the death of her father, she was to succeed to the county
of Vertus in Champagne.
This was a great deal, but this was not enough. There was in
France a strong party so hostile to the Lord of Milan, that riches, and
mere riches, were not enough to overpower their opposition.
Visconti desired above all things a Royal alliance. He saw that the
Guelf—the national party—in Italy was strong and was
unrepresented. He would be Head of the Guelfs, until he secured
something better, and his best title to that Headship was a French
alliance. Moreover, self-preservation, no less than ambition, rendered
the marriage desirable. Isabel of Bavaria, granddaughter of the
murdered Bernabò Visconti, was Queen of France. How could
Giangaleazzo suffer that his exiled cousins should possess so
tremendous an advantage over him? He may have felt himself
insecure in his usurped sovereignty, so long as France was united by
blood and interest only to the Disinherited. If Valentine married
Louis, Milan was safe from France. So at Christmas, 1386,
Giangaleazzo offered the husband of Valentine the county of Vertus,
in his lifetime as well as after his death, and included in the marriage
contract the astounding clause of the succession of Valentine to
Milan.
Even without this, Valentine was a very wealthy heiress; she
brought back to France her mother’s dowry, the county of Vertus in
Champagne. In addition to this she took into the kingdom 450,000
golden florins, a freight of golden ornaments and jewels, furniture to
the amount of 70,000 florins, gold and silver plate, and the county of
Asti in Lombardy, with a yearly income of nearly 30,000 golden
florins.[15]
The county of Asti comprised a whole province of towns, villages,
and castles. Thirty signories were in its fief; forty-eight villas paid
homage to the Count of Asti; Brie and Cherasco, two large towns in
Piedmont, belonged directly to him. In the politics of those times few
things are more striking than the singular lightmindedness with
which a king of France bestows upon a Lombard adventurer a
county in the very heart and centre of his own kingdom; or the
confidence with which an Italian conqueror hands the key of his
position to a wealthy neighbour. The situation of the French at Asti
turned out to have the very gravest political consequences. It
assured them Savona, Genoa, Pisa for a moment, and a century of
wars about the Milanese. For this secure footing in Lombardy gave a
point of reality to their vision of an Italian kingdom, and made the
subtraction of Italy from the Empire appear not only desirable but
possible. On the other hand, it familiarized Italy with the French.
Henceforth the Italian princes, in any dispute among themselves,
would call in the protection not only of the King of France but of
their French neighbour, the powerful Count of Asti.
But at first the Lombards did not like it. “I Lombardi,” says Corio,
“furono di mala voglia.” What they really dreaded was the succession
of Valentine and her French husband to Milan. This is too
complicated and intricate a question to dispose of here. I will only
say that the Italians believed that in some fashion Giangaleazzo had
secured Milan to his daughter, in case he should have no sons, or (as
actually happened) in case all his sons should die childless. But the
question of the French claim to Milan deserves a history to itself.
 IV.
In April, 1387, Valentine of Milan was married by proxy and parole
to Louis, Duke of Touraine. The bride was twenty-one, the
bridegroom just sixteen; but, as Juvenal des Ursins remarked, “Assez
caut, subtil et sage de son aage.” But not until the 3rd of June,
1389, did the Lord of Milan send his married daughter to her home
in France.
For in France a powerful faction opposed the marriage. The king
was little more than a lad; entirely—or, of late, almost entirely—
submissive to his uncle, the Duke of Burgundy. When the wise King
Charles expired in the autumn of 1380, he left the custody of his two
children to this younger brother of his, who in all his battles and
adventures had been his right-hand man. But the King left the
Regency of the Kingdom to the elder of his brothers, the Duke of
Anjou. In every sense the brothers were rivals and antagonists; the
interests of Anjou lay to the South, the interests of Burgundy to the
North. Anjou was a man of culture, made by nature to be the head
of a society of nobles; while Burgundy, the Captain, was the
champion of popular rights. In nothing were they at one. When
Anjou left the kingdom to conquer Naples, and when the news came
to France that he would nevermore return, the supremacy of
Burgundy appeared secure. But Anjou had left behind him a
successor—not his son, the child-king of Sicily. No, the real successor
to his aims and policy was his nephew, the Prince Louis, the younger
of the two sons of the dead king.
Little harmony between this lad and his uncle of Burgundy! At ten
years old the child fights like a hero at Rosebecque; but the old
captain, his tutor, keeps all his smiles for the other nephew, the
docile and amiable king. He feels in Louis a spirit of danger, a breath
of insubordination. And, in truth, one after the other, the ancient
counsellors and servitors of Anjou take shelter in the household of
the prince. Burgundy feels that Louis is Anjou Redivivus—he must be
kept low. And for this the testament of Charles V. gives ample
warrant: for that king, well-named the Wise, feeling that the danger
of France lay in the greatness of her princes, had conquered his
fatherly heart and decreed that his younger son should have no
more than a pension of 12,000 livres a year. But this was not to be.
As time went on, and the Regency came to an end, Louis stimulated
his placid brother to a sense of independence. And the young king,
less Roman than his father, and glad perhaps to feel in the kingdom
another power than that of Burgundy, began to enrich his only
brother, giving him the counties of Valois and Beaumont, lands in
Cotentin, Caen, Champagne, and Brie: then the Duchy of Touraine;
the promise of the inheritance of the old Duchess of Orleans; finally,
this rich marriage with Valentine Visconti.
Burgundy resisted with might and main. Not only would this
marriage make Louis too strong, but of all brides Valentine was the
bride least to his mind. For Burgundy had married two of his own
children into the House of Bavaria, and had given a Bavarian
princess—the vivacious Isabel—as wife to the young king. Now all
these Bavarians were the grandchildren of Bernabò, murdered by
the father of Valentine. Also the niece of Burgundy, Béatrix
d’Armagnac, “la gaie Armagnageoise,” had married in 1382. This
Carlo Visconti, Lord of Parma, heir of Bernabò, had been stripped of
all his goods by Giangaleazzo and Beatrice, no longer laughing, had
returned to eat the bread of exile in her brother’s house. Thus the
Queen, and Burgundy, and Armagnac, and Berry (the other brother
of the dead king) were bound by every instinct of natural anger and
honourable vendetta to look upon Giangaleazzo as the spoiler of
their kinsmen—of mother, children, niece, or husband—and in their
eyes the riches of Milan were the price of blood. Not one of these
but hoped to oust the usurper and restore the rightful line. And so
for two years they contrived to defer the marriage.[16]
Meanwhile the influence of Burgundy weakened, that of Prince
Louis increased, with the king. In the autumn of 1388 the disastrous
“Voyage d’Allemagne” deeply discredited Burgundy, its author. In
their tent at Corenzich, far from Queen and Court, the two brothers
held long colloquies. Not in vain did Louis plead for his bride. In the
summer of 1389, Philippe de Florigny was sent into Lombardy to
bring her home.
Valentine took away with her an escort of knights, a burden of
gold and gems, the possession of Asti, and the promise of Milan. She
had in her caskets three hundred thousand pearls of price, beside
the pearls upon her gala-dresses. Her plate was valued at more than
one hundred thousand marks Parisis. Her jewels, ornaments, and
tapestries were estimated at nearly seven hundred thousand golden
florins.[17] Giangaleazzo had found nothing too costly or too radiant
for his only daughter. When at last he let her go, he rode with her
out of the gates of Pavia, saying never a word of farewell, looking
not once into her beloved face, lest he should fall a-weeping. In the
saddest hour of her tragic life, Valentine remembered with tears that
silent parting.
It was the 17th of August, 1389, according to the dates of the
Monk of St. Denis, when Valentine rode into Melun to meet her
bridegroom. The King was there as well as all the Court—a Court full
of kinsmen for Valentine. The Viscontis counted their alliances with
the kings of France back into those mythical ages when Æneas,
ancestor of either House, founded the city of Angleria. Valentine
found plenty of more recent connections. The King and her husband
were both her first cousins, and so was the young King of Sicily; the
Dukes of Burgundy and Berry were her uncles. She was also, as I
have said, first cousin once removed to the King’s young wife, Isabel
of Bavaria. She was cousin also to Madame de Montauban, cousin by
marriage to Madame d’Armagnac. But these three kinswomen looked
on her with horror, and all her splendour seemed to them unholy
spoil fresh from the unclean hands of her father, the triumphant
assassin of his kinsmen.
The jealousy and suspicion of the Queen must have been the
earliest greeting of Valentine at Melun. Queen Isabel was the idol of
the Court. Radiantly beautiful, eighteen years old, she was not
satisfied with the devotion of her husband. Charles VI. was a gentle,
kind-hearted, stalwart young man, at two-and-twenty already rather
bald, clear of eye and cheek, generous, slow-witted, unapt to State
and dignity. He was lovable and sweet in temper; “he emitted, like
an odoriferous flower, the ingenuity of his perfect character,” writes
the anonymous Monk of St. Denis. But at his side, more brilliant and
more eloquent than he, rode the first knight of chivalry, the King’s
only brother, Louis, Duke of Touraine. This young man was eighteen
years old, extremely handsome, so witty and so wise that in the
University of Paris there were no doctors who were proof against his
bonne memoire et belle loquelle. Often at night, in the Hôtel de
Saint Paul at Paris, he and the young Marshal Boucicault would sit
into the grey hours of the morning, devising and arguing the nature
of the soul, or making rondels, songs, and ballads. Other days and
nights were spent in less innocent amusements; for the beautiful
Duke of Touraine was so irresistible a lover that popular fancy
endowed him with a magic wand and an enchanted ring, making
him absolute master of all women. None the less—though in a
knight it were more noble to succour than to enslave fair ladies—the
Duke was considered (a woman has pronounced it) “the very refuge
and retreat of chivalry.” And the charm of his youth and beauty, of
his rhetoric and laughter, of his gentle manners and brilliant
knightliness, still exhales from the dusty pages of Christine de Pisan
and Juvenal des Ursins. These two loved him. But the hostile
Monstrelet, the critical Monk of St. Denis, the unenthusiastic
Froissart—even these assure us of his enchanting presence.
According to Burcarius the King was handsomer than his young
brother; but we must allow for a natural Burgundian hostility to
Louis, and a natural Burgundian preference for force and valour,
fresh colour, sweet temper, good humour, and all vigorous northern
qualities, in preference to the subtler charms of their enemy. The
stalwart Fleming thinks the King the finest man at Court, and
handsomer than any there, far handsomer than his wife, “jolie et
avenante,” indeed, but “basse et brunette”: fatal defects in the eyes
of a Fleming! Her indisputable empire over men he ascribes not to
her face, but to her lively manners. “Folle et légère,” was she:
 “Touse n’y avoit tant jonette
Plaine de sy grant gaiété
Ny de sy grant joliveté
Sy amoureuse, ne sy lie,
Que cette Bergère jolie.”[18]

As for Louis, the Burgundian has no word in favour of this

melancholy free-lover, this Tristifer (for such is the name he goes by
among shepherds) who sins with no pleasure in sin; who spends his
days in the pursuit of love, yet keeps a heart of iron; whose joys are
such as are not to be found in the real world, but the fantastic joys
of art, repugnant to the Philistine:

“Tristifer, tristièce portant.

... Et tout fut-il jolis,
Trop sembloit-il mirancolis;
Qui le coer a plus dur que fer.

. . . . . . \.

Bien nouvelette chanson

S’en va tout chantant à hault son,
Qu’il avoit, par un soir bruyant
Et bel, rimoié en riant.”

Thus the Burgundian ... unaware that this portrait of his enemy is
the only one that awakens curiosity and stimulates the fancy. And,
by way of adding a blacker touch than all, he tells us that this
singing Tristifer is the paramour of the gay Queen Belligère.
I have said that Louis was held to possess an unearthly ring, a
magic wand, of desire. For a perfect knight it was said that he had
put them to strange uses. He had fascinated with his wand, he had
bewitched with the circle of his ring, the young wife of his brother,
the beautiful Queen Isabel. And he was the bridegroom of Valentine
Visconti. Queen Isabel was at Melun to greet her new kinswoman.
We can imagine with what critical eyes she ran her over. Valentine,
though not beautiful, was a novel and irradiating vision in her veil of
gems. She was wise too; she could talk with her husband over the
poems he made, the verses of Lord Salisbury and Maître Eustache
Deschamps, the romances of Wenzel of Luxembourg, or of Maître
Jean d’Arras, all the literature of the Court. She could argue with
him, this subtle Lombard, in the tenuous and fanciful dissertations
that he loved. Queen Isabel could not endure to see this stranger, by
reason of her splendour and her novelty become the centre of
attraction. The marriage festival was scarcely over when Isabel
persuaded her husband to ordain a greater festivity for herself. She
had been married four years, she was known by sight to every clerk
in the Rue St. Denis, yet the King, obedient to her behest,
proclaimed the Royal Entry of the Queen into Paris.
 V.
This Paris that Valentine entered as a stranger was a beautiful city.
The streets and bridges had been largely rebuilt by her uncle,
Charles the Wise. Between the new Bastille and the river he had
raised an immense royal palace, the Hôtel de St. Paul. Close at hand
stood the Palais de Tournelles, the great hotel of the King of Sicily,
the Hôtel Clisson, and the Hôtel de Behaigne, where the husband of
Valentine sometimes lived. A little farther off (in the Rue de Turbigo)
the castle of the Duke of Burgundy still rears its out-dated menace.
On the left bank of the Seine another group of palaces surrounded
Nôtre Dame. At the extremity of the city stood the Louvre. Rebuilt by
Charles the Wise, it was endowed by him with a library of nine
hundred and ten volumes (chiefly illuminated missals, legends,
miracles, and treatises on astrology). There a silver lamp burned
always day and night in the service of students, to whom the library
was ever open.
Paris was a beautiful city; but it seemed a paradise upon the
occasion of the royal entry. The Rue St. Denis was draped from top
to bottom in green and crimson silk scattered with stars. Under the
gateway angels sang in a starry heaven, and to the sweet sound of
instruments little children played a miracle. There were towers and
stages raised along the streets, where the legend of Troy-town and
other pleasant matters were enacted. There were fountains also,
flowing with milk or flowing with claret. Maidens, in rich chaplets of
flowers, stood beside them and out of golden cups they gave the
passers-by to drink, and sang melodiously the while; up and down
this magic city went the citizens’ wives and daughters in long robes
of gold and purple. The citizens themselves were clad in green, the
royal officers in rose colour. But all these splendours paled and
dwindled when the royal procession came in sight. In the middle, in
an open litter, sat the Queen, the beautiful, smiling idol of the feast;
she was dressed in a gown of silk, sewn over with French lilies
worked in gold. Behind her, in painted cars, went the great ladies of
the Court. Only the Duchess of Touraine had no litter; Valentine rode
on a fair palfrey, marvellously caparisoned; she went on one side of
the Queen’s litter among the royal dukes. The people of Paris, says
Froissart, were as anxious to see the new Duchess as the Queen,
whom indeed they had often seen. For Madame Valentine was
immensely rich, the daughter of a great conqueror, and she had only
just come out of Lombardy, a mysterious country where wonderful
things came to pass. What impression did Valentine make on the
people of Paris, pressing and craving to see the foreign duchess?
Which of her gala-dresses did she wear? The scarlet one sewn
thick with pearls and diamonds, with a cap of pearls and scarlet for
her dusky hair? Or the robe of gold brocade with sleeves and
headdress of woven pearls? Or the flashing crown of balasses and
sapphires, and the dress of scarlet sewn with jewels and
embroidered with pale blue borage flowers? In any of these this
splendid Italian stranger must have appeared to the burghers of
Paris as a vision of Southern luxury, of mysterious outlandish
enchantment. At least it is certain that never after they looked upon
her as a mere mortal woman. Just at that season every one was
reading the “Mélusine” of Maître Jean d’Arras. Valentine of Milan with
her fairy splendours, her subtle wisdom, her Lombard traditions—
Valentine, with the Visconti snake on her escutcheon—must have
seemed to these Parisians much such another mysterious serpent-
woman, another Mélusine. For the Italian character, never fanatic
and yet so prone to spiritual passions; seldom bestial, yet so guilty
of unnatural vices—Italy has ever been a mystery, a hateful enigma
to the practical French; and of all Italians the Lombards, the border
people, are most unlike their Gallic neighbours. A century later, when
the French poured into Italy, no blazing mountain of Vesuvius, no
wonderful Venetian city swimming in the seas, no antique and
glorious ruins of Rome, so much astonished the foreign soldiers as
the learned and subtle ladies of Lombardy. Those later chroniclers
who have been in Italy relate with wonder their fables of ecstatic
virgins, and gifted women wiser than their sex; they have seen one
Anna, a woman forty years of age, who never eats, drinks, or sleeps,
and who bears on her body the mystical wounds of Christ, breaking
out and bleeding afresh on every Friday. In Milan, a demoiselle
Trivulce, “de son grant jeune aage,“ wrote letters in Latin and was
eloquent in oratory; “elle estoit aussi poeticque” (adds the author of
La Mer des Chroniques) “et scavoit moult bien disputer avecques
clercs et docteurs.” And also she was virtuous, so that her holy life
seemed a thing to marvel on. At Venice, Maître Nicole Gilles
encountered a certain Virgin Cassandra, the daughter of Angelo
Fideli, a maiden expert in the seven liberal arts and in theology, all of
which matters she expounded in public lectures. At Quiers, near Asti,
a “jeune pucelle,” the daughter of Maître Jehan Solier, received the
king with a public and most eloquent oration. Learned and subtle
and virtuous as these Lombard ladies were, enthusiastic and spiritual
as were many of their countrymen, yet this strange Italy, where the
women taught the men, where Jesus Christ in Florence was the
official head of the Republic, inspired a secret dread and horror in
the French. Like men in an enchanted country, they feared what
might lurk behind the shows of things. Above all, the French could
never rid themselves of a haunting suspicion of poison—poison and
sorcery, underhand and terrible weapons, such as these frank and
passionate Gauls associated with the subtlety and wisdom of the
people they had conquered. “And yet,” says Commines, “I must here
speak somewhat in honour of the Italian nation, because we never
found in all this voyage that they did seek to do us harm by poison,
and yet, if they had chosen, we could hardly have avoided it.”
This attitude of suspicion towards Italy, of reluctant admiration,
characterized the French of 1494. Minus the admiration, it is quite as
significant of the French to-day; and in 1387 the same distrust was
there, but sharper, more anxious, and the same wonder, but
intensified. Valentine the Italian, seemed to these alert, honest,
practical Parisians a marvel of strangeness and wisdom; but to them
these attributes suggested chiefly a fatal potency for evil.
And, in truth, there was in Italy a wickedness such as for another
hundred years should not penetrate into France. The Italians were a
nation of secret poisoners; and the French bourgeois vaguely
guessed that this splendid young lady was acquainted with a world
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