"Mon Dieu! how lovely is youth, and how its memories do overpower one! Ascanio, Colombe, this lovely evening we are passing together reminds me of all those I passed by Stefana's side sitting upon a bench outside her father's house. She would gaze up at the sky, and I would gaze at her. It was twenty years ago, but it seems only yesterday; I put out my hand and fancy that I can feel hers, but it is yours, my children; what God does is well done. "Oh, simply to see her in her white dress was to feel tranquillity steal over my soul! Often when we parted we had not uttered a word, and yet I carried away from those silent interviews all sorts of fine and noble thoughts, which made me better and greater. "But all this had an end, as all happiness in this world has. "Raphael del Moro had but little farther to go to reach the lowest depths of destitution. He owed his kind neighbor Gismondo Gaddi two thousand ducats, which he knew not how to pay. The thought drove this honest man to desperation. He wished at least to save his daughter, and intrusted his purpose to give her to me to one of the workmen, doubtless that he might broach the subject to me. But he was one of the idiots whom I had lost my temper with when they threw Stefana's sisterly affection at my head as a reproach. The blockhead did not even allow Raphael to finish. "'Abandon that scheme, Master Del Moro,' he said; 'the suggestion would not be favorably received, my word for it.' "The goldsmith was proud: he believed that I despised him on account of his poverty, and he never referred to the subject again. "Some time after, Gismondo Gaddi came to demand payment of his debt, and when Raphael asked for more time. "'Hark ye,' said Gismondo, 'give me your daughter's hand, and I will give you a receipt in full.' "Del Moro was transported with joy. To be sure Gaddi had the reputation of being a little covetous, a little high-tempered, and a little jealous, but he was rich, and what the poor esteem and envy most, alas! is wealth. When Raphael mentioned this unexpected proposition to his daughter, she made no reply; but that evening, as we left the bench where we had been sitting together, to return to the house, she said to me, 'Benvenuto, Gismondo Gaddi has asked my hand in marriage, and my father has given his consent.' "With those simple words she left me. I leaped to my feet, and in a sort of frenzy I went out of the city and wandered about over the fields. Throughout the night, now running like a madman, and again lying at full length upon the grass and weeping, a myriad of mad, desperate, frenzied thoughts chased one another through my disordered brain.