TO THE READER.

As I prepare, dear reader, to hand over to you this little book of my brother, Count Charles original: Comitis Caroli; Charles was the original author of the work, and his brother Marco is acting as his posthumous editor.—who was prevented by an untimely death from this his duty of properly delivering it—a heavy grief has disturbed my mind (which is still affected by that event) following a long and wavering consideration of this task. For although I could not at first so overcome the innate love and longing for him that the fact of his life being snatched away did not seem most bitter to me; nevertheless, both from the precepts of reason and the remedy of time, I would have always considered it something to be borne more moderately, as a kind of common misfortune; if it had stopped at that limit alone, and had not also dragged along with it a certain greater ruin. Namely, the loss of those ornaments springing from his genius, than which these fleeting and troublesome times produce nothing more immune to mortality, more purified purified original: defaecatius; literally "strained of dregs," meaning something refined, clear, or spiritually cleansed. from distress, and more closely joined to the blessed divinity of our souls: and which, if he himself—deceitful fortune permitting—into their own