Two years later, a very fine young man paid his attentions to her. This time again, and, still for the same reason, Dona Diana's parents violently opposed the marriage, because the aspirant was not of noble birth. She herself declared it should take place. A state of pique ensues between the daughter's sense of honour and the father's. The young man is forbidden the house. Dona Diana is no longer taken to the country and hardly ever to church. With scrupulous care, every means of meeting her lover is taken from her. He disguises himself and sees her secretly at long intervals. She becomes more and more resolute, and refuses the most [Pg 137] brilliant matches, even a title and a great establishment at the Court of Ferdinand VII. The whole town is talking of the misfortunes of the two lovers and of their heroic constancy. At last the majority of Dona Diana draws near. She gives her father to understand that she means to make use of her right of disposing of her own hand. The family, driven back on its last resources, opens negotiations for the marriage. When it is half concluded, at an official meeting of the two families, the young man, after six years' constancy, refuses Dona Diana.[4] A quarter of an hour later no trace of anything--she was consoled. Did she love from pique? Or are we face to face with a great soul, that disclaims to parade its sorrow before the eyes of the world? In passion-love satisfaction, if I can call it such, is often only to be won by piquing the loved one's self-esteem. Then, in appearance, the lover realises all that can be desired; complaints would be ridiculous and seem senseless. He cannot speak of his misfortune, and yet how constantly he knows and feels its prick! Its traces are inwoven, so to speak, with circumstances, the most flattering and the most fit to awaken illusions of enchantment. This misfortune rears its monstrous head at the tenderest moments, as if to taunt the lover and make him feel, at one and the same instant, all the delight of being loved by the charming and unfeeling creature in his arms, and the impossibility of this delight being his. Perhaps after jealousy, this is the cruellest unhappiness. The story is still fresh in a certain large town[5] of a man of soft and gentle nature, who was carried away by a rage of this kind to spill the blood of his mistress, who only loved him from pique against her sister. He arranged [Pg 138] with her, one evening, to come for a row on the sea by themselves, in a pretty little boat he had devised himself. Once well out to sea, he touches a spring, the boat divides and disappears for ever. I have seen a man of sixty set out to keep an actress, the most capricious, irresponsible, delightful and wonderful on the London stage--Miss Cornel. "And you expect that she'll be faithful?" people asked him. "Not in the least. But she'll be in love with me--perhaps madly in love."