"Dearest lady!" I cried out, "what under Heaven am I to take? I adore Aurelia; I ask nothing better than leave to serve her, to kneel at her feet. If she is cruel to me, that is my pride. If she is kind, that is my humiliation. If she were to kill me, that would be my topmost reward." "Very true indeed," she said. "And what if she were to do, as I should certainly do, ignore you altogether?" "I should not cease to love her. I should have nothing to complain of," I said. She tossed her hands up in despair. "If this is what conies of reading your Dante, I advise the 'Song of Solomon,'" she said. "I have never opened the 'Divine Comedy'--still less the 'Vita Nova'; but I consider the author a donkey, and am sure that was the opinion of his Donna Beatrice." Count Giraldi, for some reason which I could not then comprehend, did not care to talk of my affair. He said nothing of Aurelia to me--and, so far as I could see, avoided the lady herself as much as the discussion of her position. He told me that he had been able to offer a judgeship of the Court of Cassation to Dr. Lanfranchi, and that he was in great hopes that he would take it. In that case he would, of course, reside in Florence; and "The rest," said he, "I shall leave to you." I told him that, if Donna Aurelia was reconciled to her husband through his means, I should be eternally in his debt--and not less so though I should be in Padua and with the mountains between us. He frowned, he was puzzled. "You leave us?" he said; "you abandon Donna Aurelia?" I told him that I could never cease to love her, but that love for a lady seemed to me an extremely bad reason for bringing about her ruin. I had gone so near to that already that nothing in the world would induce me to risk it again. He affected to misunderstand me, in his scoffing way. "Admirable! Admirable!" he cried. "I see that you have recovered your spirits." "I hope my spirit has never failed me yet when I have had need of it," I said. "I shall thank God on my knees this night that my lady has been saved alive. No lover in the world has ever begged for his mistress's surrender so heartily as I shall pray for the return of mine to her husband's arms." He clapped me on the back. "You are a master of paradox indeed," he said. I assured him that I was serious. "Then," said he, "I admire while I do not follow you. I ask you once more, do you wish me to understand that you abandon Donna Aurelia? I have my reasons, mind you, and have no wish to take you unawares." "I cannot abandon what I do not pursue," I replied. "I can only repeat that it would be a very curious proof of my love for a lady to urge her to perdition on my account."