While kneeling beside the envious iron grille which separated me from Despina, and kept all profane sinners from the vicinity of the fair vestals, I felt happiness even at being so near her—to hear her soft breathing, her low responses, and the rustle of her satin dress—to watch the heaving breast, the long lashes of the downcast eye, and the beauty of those auburn ringlets, which seemed "interwoven by the fingers of love!" as Petrarch has it. O, Madonna mia! these were the pure aspirations of a young and gallant heart. But alas! how were they responded to?—how requited? I will not trouble you with much more of this; though love quickens a fertile imagination, and I could relate a thousand devices formed to gain the attention of the beautiful novice: which all proved vain. She kept her long eye lashes cast down and her bright eyes obstinately fixed on the monotonous pages of her mass book; which she affected to prefer to the gayest cavalier on the corso: for such I considered myself in those days of youth and vanity; and certainly my cap had the tallest feather, my belt the longest sword, and my uniform the smartest cut in all Naples. We all know how passion is inflamed by difficulty; and from the time she left the church after vespers, until the moment of beholding her again at matins, ages seemed to elapse: but they were ages of scheming, contrivance, and stratagem. The abbess, who was Despina’s near relative, soon suspected the object of my devotion was an earthly, and not a heavenly virgin; she was an acute Calabrian and watched me attentively: in short, the fair novice appeared at matins, mass, and vespers no more. But the ingenuity of Monsignore Cupid, is fully a match for all the cold precautions of guardians and enemies. Daily and nightly I came with my friend Santugo (then a joyous student, fresh from the University of Naples) to survey the lofty walls, the iron portal, and grated loopholes of the convent with the faint hope of beholding her; but, corpo di Baccho! we might as well have looked down the crater of Vesuvius, the flames from whose summit often lighted up our nightly patrols. In short, signor, with a key of gold I gained over the portress, who conveyed to Despina a most elaborately written letter: a ring, bearing her initials, D.V., was my only answer. Croce di Malta! Even at this distant hour, the recollection of the joyous moment when I first received it, stirs up a tumult within me! After that we used to meet in the convent garden every night, but only for a few moments.