now cost nothing to my resignation since a generous compassion has let me conceive of the hope of not being forgotten." "In only three days!" exclaimed Polia. "In effect," she went on, "I have had too little time to reflect on the secret you have just confided in me to dare to form an opinion and even less a judgement, but it seems to me that if the woman for whom you resolved to do such things does not remain in ignorance of them as I was ignorant of them before now, she did not deserve to inspire them." "She is ignorant of them," replied Francesco, "because she does not know that I love her. Oh! Without a doubt, my heart could have found ineffable consolations in the idea that my love was known to her, that she was not entirely insensitive to it, and that she might, at the very least, remember it with pity! Of all the torments of love, the most cruel perhaps is to remain an unknown quantity to the person one loves; of all the feelings one inspires that dull feeling of indifference for a stranger is perhaps the most painful that love has to fear. But why throw into a heart that is peaceful and happy pains that one is hardly capable of bearing oneself? Either my passion will be rejected, as I suppose, and what will I have gained from having this sad intuition confirmed, or it will be mutual and I will have to suffer for both of us. What am I saying: suffer for both of us? My despair is my life since I have found in myself enough strength to live with it. Hers would have killed me already." "You take your suppositions too far, Francesco," Polia replied buoyantly. "Who can know if she does not feel the same sorrows and the same anguish as you do? Who can know if she does not aspire to find a moment to tell you that? What would you say if this noble and rich female whose shine dazzles you, but whose soul is probably no calmer than yours, what would you say, Francesco, if she came to offer you her hand freely, if, subject to a sway both respectable and inflexible, she came to promise it you in marriage?" "What would I say, Polia?" Francesco answered with cold dignity, "I would refuse it. In order to dare love her I love, one needs to be to a certain extent worthy of her, and my most constant application has been to ennoble my soul so that it would be closer to hers. What right would I have to accept the perks of a high position that society denies me? With what impudence could I take my seat at the banquet of fortune, I who have only obscurity and misery as my prerogatives? Oh! I would a thousand times rather have the horrid sorrow that consumes me than the shameful reputation of an adventurer rebuffed by the world and made rich by love!"