“The banquet passed without my even obtaining a glimpse of the object of my ardent longing; yet I might well be satisfied. From this hour the wall between our two estates was as it were demolished; an intercourse began, which after a short time developed into friendly relations, and now of course Hero, who had retired from the sight of the guests at the noisy drinking-bout, was visible at any hour of the day to the neighbor who came as it were clad in a tunic,[1] to see her father. “Let me say nothing about how it all happened. A hundred details gradually wove the certainty that the worthy Sicilian’s daughter favored me, and one evening in the park, on the very spot under the laurel-bush where I had first beheld her, I kissed the words of consent from her quivering lips. “Those were happy days, Bononius! We still kept our love concealed; not that we had reason to doubt her father’s consent, but there was an indescribable charm in this mystery; I might say: we feared to profane our happiness, if we should draw aside the veil too soon. True, our relations did not wholly escape the excellent Heliodorus’ notice. More than once, while wandering by Hero’s side through the colonnades of the peristyle, I met his sympathizing smile, which seemed to say: ‘Friend, I see through you, but am not angered by your secret suit.’ “Then one evening--we had formed the resolution the day before to appear on the following Friday, October 1st, Heliodorus’ birthday, hand in hand before him and reveal everything--Hero received me with an agitated expression that greatly alarmed me. Her father had gone to Rome on business and was not expected to return till late. Hero had been alone all day with Lydia, a young relative with whom she was educated, had refused old Septimia, her grey-haired confidante, admission to her apartments, neglected to eat, and did not dress until the hour I usually came, when she waited for me on the stone bench under the colonnade of the peristyle. Lydia--a charming creature, by the way, only she reminds one a little too much of our highly-painted fashionable ladies to compare with Hero’s divine simplicity--was sitting beside her when I entered. My sweet, sorrowful love was holding a triangular paper in her hand; Lydia, frowning, clenched in her dainty fist a parchment covered with red letters. After long questioning I learned the following details. “The two girls were walking in the grounds just after sunrise, as they usually did in the morning. Suddenly a hideously-ugly old woman, dressed in rags, stood before the unsuspecting maidens, called three times in a shrill voice, with the expression of a Gorgon, a prophetic ‘woe!’, threw a roll at my trembling Hero’s feet, and hastily vanished. “The girls, as if spellbound by this mysterious apparition, took the roll from the ground and untied its fastenings. The contents consisted of a written parchment and a triangular piece of blank paper. The purport of the parchment was as follows: