Such were the influences to which I gave myself up, but not without some excuse, perhaps. At my age this reaction of gayety and love of pleasure was natural. After the experience I had passed through, I felt the need of something to divert me—the need of forgetting. How, then, could I possibly resist all there was around me to amuse and enable me to forget? Of course I had not forgotten Mme. de Kergy, or Diana, or the eloquence of Gilbert, but I had nearly lost all the pure, noble, and soul‐stirring sentiments my acquaintance with them had awakened; and if any unacknowledged danger lurked therein, it had so ephemeral an influence on me that all trace was effaced, as a deadly odor passes away that we only inhaled for a moment. As for my charming Stella, she no more thought of giving me advice than of setting me an example. She shared with me her happiest hours in the day, but I could not follow her in the courageous course of her hidden daily life. I did not see her during the hours when, with a brow as serene, a face as tranquil, as that with which she welcomed me at a later hour, she immolated her tastes and wishes, and by the perpetual sacrifice of herself earned the means of rendering her daughter as happy as she pleased. I saw her, on the contrary, during my daily drive with her and Angiolina—one of the greatest pleasures of the day for us all. To see them together, the mother as merry as the child, one would have supposed the one as happy, as fully exempt from all care, as the other!... We often took long drives in this way, sometimes beyond the extreme point of Posilippo, sometimes to Portici, or even to Capo di Monte. There we would leave our carriage and forget ourselves in long conversations while Angiolina was running about, coming every now and then to throw herself into her mother’s arms or mine. I loved her passionately, and it often seemed to me, as I embraced her, that I felt for her something of that love which is the strongest on earth, and makes us endure the privation of all other affection. Angiolina was, it is true, one of those children better fitted than most to touch the maternal fibre that is hidden in every womanly heart. She had accents, looks, and moods of silence which seemed to indicate a soul attentive to voices that are not of this world, and sometimes, at the sight of her expressive childish face, one could not help wondering if she did not already hear those of heaven.