the service of the king,” revealed the fact that an heir had been born.  The officers and crew of the frigate, also, must have gossiped about the commodore’s midnight adventure, and the strange shipment of a lady and child off the Italian coast on a moonlight night; but not one of them ever gave a sign or betrayed the fact.  Such secrecy is, to say the least, very unusual.  Then, returning to Prince Charlie himself, it is indisputable that when his wife left him in disgust in 1780, he had no recourse to his imaginary son to cheer his old age, but turned instinctively to Charlotte Stuart, his illegitimate child, for sympathy.  In July 1784 he executed a deed, with all the necessary forms, legitimating this person, and bestowing upon her the title of Albany, by which he had himself been known for fourteen years, with the rank of duchess.  To legitimate his natural daughter, and give her the reversion of his own title, was very unlike the action of a pseudo-king who had a lawful son alive.  In 1784, also, when the pretender executed his will, he left this same Duchess of Albany, of his own constitution, all that he possessed, with the exception of a small bequest to his brother the cardinal, and a few trifling legacies to his attendants.  To the duchess he bequeathed his palace at Florence, with all its rich furniture, all his plate and jewels, including those brought into the family by his mother, the Princess Clementina Sobieski, and also such of the crown jewels of England as had been conveyed to the continent by James II.  If the claimant to the British throne had had a son, would he have alienated from him not only his Italian residence and the Polish jewels which he inherited from his mother, but also the crown jewels of England, which had come into his possession as the descendant of a king, and which were, by the same right, the inalienable property of his legitimate son?

The Duchess of Albany very evidently knew nothing of the existence of her supposed half-brother.  She survived her father Prince Charles Edward for two years.  Before her decease she sent to the cardinal the whole of the crown jewels, and at her death she left him all her property, with the exception of an annuity to her mother, Miss Walkinshaw, who survived her for some time, and who was known in Jacobite circles as the Countess of Alberstroff.

The conduct of the Princess Louisa, the reputed mother of the child, was equally strange.  When she left her old debauched husband, she found consolation in the friendship and intimacy of the poet Alfieri, who at his death left her his whole property.  Cardinal York settled a handsome income upon her, and her second lover—­a Frenchman, named Fabre—­added to her store.  She survived till 1824, when her alleged son must have been in his fifty-first year; yet at her death all her property, including the seal and the portrait of Prince Charles Edward, were left to her French admirer, and were by him bequeathed to an Italian sculptor.