Publisher's Synopsis
"This story is worthy of the days of the Borgias and their poisons. A woman, emerging from a tomb at midnight, is followed by an Englishman out for a stroll. She disappears in an old, deserted palace, mounts to the top story, and there meets a man. dressed, like herself, in mediaeval costume. A quarrel ensues, and the Englishman witnesses the death of this man by poisoned wine after the manner of the great Lucrezia. In the morning he wakes up in a public square, and meets, a few nights later, the fair poisoner at the opera."
-"Book Chat," Volume 7 [1892]
"An ingenuous and theatrical rather than genuinely dramatic story by Mr. Fergus Hume. The author admires the fantastic romances of Theophile Gautier and his school, and he has an easy and agreeable style of writing. The scene of the story is laid in Italy, at Verona, but neither the local color nor the characters are thoroughly defined. Mr. Hume's Italy is the Italy of the tourist who is not independent of his Baedeker; he has the conventional idea of Italians as made up of Renaissance tyranny and guile, slightly modernized by Neapolitan lazzaronism. The rather numerous errors in the incidental phrases of Italian may be partly the fault of the printer. The book is readable and yet sensational."
-"Literary World" [1893]
