Florinda had an uncle resident at Bologna, where he had lived some three years previous to the opening of our story, filling some post delegated to him by the government.  This uncle, Signor Latrezzi, was very fond of Florinda, or at least he had always appeared to be so; and up to the time the Grand Duke had become her guardian, he had himself assumed the care of his lovely young niece.  Some openly declared that he had done this from mercenary motives; but be that as it may, the story will divulge his character.  He had not left her surrounded by the gayety and dissipation of the court of Florence without some misgivings, lest some untoward circumstance might befall her, or that she might become entangled in some alliance contrary to her own interests and his desires.

In consequence of these promptings, he had earnestly impressed upon Florinda at the time of his parting from her, on his way to Bologna, to be wary and careful.  The truth was, that her uncle had laid out a plan for her future, and would have been very glad to have remained by her side in order the more surely to carry it out, but he could not decline the office to which he was now appointed, and thus he was obliged to leave.  He had long designed her hand for an equally favorite nephew on his wife’s side, and on this match had firmly fixed his heart.  Some said that this was because he desired so earnestly to sustain the character, name and blood of the house of Carrati, of which Florinda was the sole survivor; others, more shrewd, declared that the uncle had a sinister motive beneath all of those so apparent.

Florinda was no stranger to this expectation, but had never given it thought, either in favor or against the consummation of her uncle’s ideas.  The subject was rarely alluded to, and even her uncle deemed her still too young to entertain the idea of matrimony.  In a country and among a class where matches were so commonly mere matters of business and mercenary calculation, such an affair did not create much remark or interest between even the parties themselves.  Aside from the considerations of family honor, the pride of birth and noble blood, the large, nay, unequalled fortune of Florinda-always excepting that of the Grand Duke-was a strong inducement to this step.  That her relation had some personal ends in view, in connection with the proposed alliance, was equally obvious to all who knew the mercenary and selfish character of his general disposition.  His treatment towards Florinda had ever been kind and fatherly, but this course was adopted only that he might gain the necessary ascendancy over her mind and purpose to make sure of his plan.

This plan of procedure, artfully adopted by her uncle from her very childhood, had completely deceived Florinda-as we shall have occasion to see-and she was led to believe him kind and affectionate to her, who was proud and selfish in all his dealings with the rest of the world.  His nephew, Petro Giampetti, was probably the only being he really loved; nor was his regard for him unalloyed, but tempered with that selfishness that formed a prominent trait in his natural disposition.  He was childless himself, and had lost his wife by death not many years previous to the time of which we write-two circumstances which had rather tended to augment his unhappy disposition.