"You shall understand them better," said Francesco, encouraged, "for I shall tell you everything. Forgive however the troubled nature and the lack of resolution in my words, for, of all the vicissitudes in my life, this is the most unexpected. The strange position into which I was born, without parents, without a guardian, almost without a friend, fallen from a great name and an independent fortune, would doubtless be enough to explain my natural melancholy. It's a cruel thing to say to yourself that your unhappiness started in the cradle and stayed with you the rest of your life. But that idea was the first I was able to be aware of. I had to acquit myself of the material debt of gratitude before I could think for a single moment of myself, and I do not need to tell you that I succeeded in that. From that time on my courage grew. I had few regrets for the grandeur and the opulence that had faded away forever. I went further. I congratulated myself sometimes, in my childish pride, on owing all my illustriousness to myself, and on being able one day to force the family that had rejected me to envy the celebrity of my once repudiated name. Such are the illusions of inexperience and vanity. One day was to destroy all and to recall me to misfortune and oblivion. Alas!" Francesco went on, "this is the mystery your overly benevolent curiosity has expressed the desire to know, and which reason made for me a law of keeping hidden in my breast. But how can I dare to reveal to you those sad and deep secrets of sick hearts that wisdom and philosophy regard as a puerile infirmity of the mind, and over which the elevation of your character keeps you too high for you to deign to bestow on them any other feeling apart from pity? I fell in love..." Hereupon Francesco stopped for a time, but reassured by a look from Polia, he continued as follows: