It is no exaggeration to say that,
compared with the ample treatment meted out to inconspicuous rulers
like Alfonso the Seventeenth or Florizel the Fat, his account of the
Good Duke Alfred is the baldest, the most perfunctory and conventional
of chronicles. Neither good nor evil is related of him. There is
nothing but a monotonous enumeration of events.
It was the bibliographer who, poring over the pages of the rival monk
Father Capocchio, that audacious and salacious friar already
mentioned--it was the bibliographer who hit upon a passage which
suggested a solution of the mystery and proved that, though Monsignor
Perrelli lived during the reign of the Good Duke, it would be
stretching unduly the sense of a plain word to say that he "flourished"
under his rule. Other persons may have flourished; not so the kindly
prelate.
"Nothing whatever," says this implacable enemy of Nepenthe, "is to be
recorded to the credit of the sanguinary brigand--so he terms the Good
Duke--nothing whatsoever: save and except only this, that he cut off the
ears of a certain prattler, intriguer, and snuff-taking sensualist
called Perrelli who, under the pretence of collecting data for an
alleged historical treatise, profited by his priestly garb to play fast
and loose with what little remained of decent family life on that
God-abandoned island.
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