"A little time after this there was a rumour in the town of a house on fire, and I was roused from sleep to hurry to the spot. Then I learned that the house belonged to one Altobello Bandarini,[50] a captain of the Venetian levies in the district of Padua. I had no acquaintance with him, in sooth I scarcely knew him by sight. Now it chanced that after the fire he hired a house next door to my own, a step which displeased me somewhat, for such a neighbour was not to my taste; but what was I to do? After the lapse of a few days, when I was in the street, I perceived a young girl who, as to her face and her raiment, was the exact image of her whom I had beheld in my dream. But I said to myself, 'What is this girl to me? If I, poor wretch that I am, take to wife a girl dowered with naught, except a crowd of brothers and sisters, it will be all over with me; forasmuch as I can hardly keep myself as it is. If I should attempt to carry her off, or to have my will of her by stealth, there will of a surety be some tale-bearers about; and her father, being a fellow-townsman and a soldier to boot, would not sit down lightly under such an injury. In this case, or in that, it is hard to say what course I should follow, for if this affair should come to the issue I most desire, I must needs fly the place.' From that same hour these thoughts and others akin to them possessed my brain, which was only too ready to harbour them, and I felt it would be better to die than to live on in such perplexity. Thenceforth I was as one love-possessed, or even burnt up with passion, and I understood what meaning I might gather from the reading of my dream. Moreover I was by this time freed from the chain which had held me back from marriage. Thus I, a willing bridegroom, took a willing bride, her kinsfolk questioning us how this thing had been brought about, and offering us any help which might be of service; which help indeed proved of very substantial benefit. "But the interpretation of my dreams did not work itself out entirely in the after life of my wife; it made itself felt likewise in the lives of my children. My wife lived with me fifteen years, and alas! this ill-advised marriage was the cause of all the misfortunes which subsequently happened to me. These must have come about either by the working of the divine will, or as the recompense due for some ill deeds wrought by myself or by my forefathers."[51]