"Even so: the second daughter of old Annibale di Santugo, who fell while fighting under the Cardinal Ruffo in Apulia. Though poor in ducats, he was rich in blood and name—being my father’s younger brother. With his last breath, he bequeathed to my care his three motherless girls—Ortensia, Bianca, and Francesca. Francesca was esteemed the greatest beauty in Italy; yet in an excess of folly—or rather, let me call it, generosity—she immured herself in a convent. To remove the only obstacle to her sister’s marriage with my friend Benedict, did this dear girl (of all the loves I have had, my only true one!) give up her slender patrimony, and take the veil in this convent at Crotona. But the bright tresses shred from her brow were scarcely consumed on the altar, ere bitter repentance and heart-consuming grief seized her. I was serving with the Neapolitan army in the Roman territories, and had not then seen her—at least, since her childhood. Would to God that I never had! How much agony might have been spared both of us! I met her at the baths of Nicastro; where, in strict charge of my mother, she had gone, by special permission, for the recovery of her health, which the close confinement of the cloister, unavailing regrets, and a lingering love for the world she had left, were destroying. I was fiery, ardent, and only three-and-twenty; she, a drooping but beautiful girl, devoted to Heaven—a veiled and vowed nun. Oh! what madness could have prompted me to love her? But Cupid and the devil are always at one’s elbow. We were cousins—a dangerous relationship—and our intimacy, open and unconstrained, plunged us at once into this delicious passion, the impulses of which I found it impossible to resist. I evaded the watchful eyes of my mother, and gained, beyond redemption, the affections of poor Francesca. She returned to her convent wretched and heart-broken. Infamy and death are, perhaps, before her. Oh! Madonna mia! She must be rescued, and at all risks!" he exclaimed, leaping up, and wrapping his cloak around him. "You will accompany me, of course? Remember ’tis the sister of Bianca!" "And if she consents to elope?" "We must carry her off to a little villa I have somewhere in the Val di Demona. There she can be quietly domiciled until the uproar is over, and I can obtain a dispensation from Rome; after which she may resume her old place in society, and laugh at the authority of the Signora Abbadessa—who, I learn from her friend, Benedetto, is a regular Tartar. Now, Claude, let us march." I buckled on my sabre, drained the decanter, and, forgetting the fatigues of the day, set forth with Santugo. We were both muffled up in our cloaks, and had our forage caps pulled over our faces to elude observation.