According to my informant, Giustiniani at once fell in love with the beautiful Marie, to such an extent that he could scarcely partake of the supper offered him. Perhaps his abstinence arose from other reasons--love being in reality a hungry passion in its early stage--for next day the young man was ill of a fever, and incapable of continuing his journey. M. Brivard and his daughter attended him kindly; and as he seemed to become worse towards evening, sent a messenger to Maddalena. The consequence was, that on the following morning Bartuccio arrived in a great state of alarm and anxiety; but fate did not permit him again to meet his friend with that whole and undivided passion of friendship in his breast with which he had quitted him a month before. Giustiniani was asleep when he entered the house, and he was received by Marie. In his excited state of mind, he was apt for new impressions, and half an hour's conversation seems not only to have filled him with love, but to have excited the same feeling in the breast of the gentle girl. It would have been more romantic, perhaps, had Marie been tenderly impressed by poor Giustiniani when he arrived at night, travel-stained and drenched with rain, in the first fit of a fever; 'but woman,' said the sagacious narrator, as he received a tumbler of grog from the steward, 'is a mystery'--an opinion I am not inclined to confute. In a few days, Giustiniani was well enough to return to his home, which he reached in a gloomy and dissatisfied state of mind. He had already observed that Bartuccio, who rode over every day professedly to see him, felt in reality ill at ease in his company, spoke no longer with copious familiarity, and left him in a few minutes, professing to be obliged to return to his duty. From his bed, however, he could hear him for some time after laughing and talking with Marie in the garden; and he felt, without knowing it, all the pangs of jealousy: not that he believed his friend would interfere and dispute with him the possession of the gem which he had discovered, and over which he internally claimed a right of property, but he was oppressed with an uneasy sentiment of future ill, and tormented with a diffidence as to his own powers of pleasing, that made him say adieu to Marie and her father with cold gratitude--that seemed afterwards to them, and to him when reflection came, sheer ingratitude.