Belviso was of great comfort to me during my time of anxiety; without the faithful creature I should have run my feet off my legs and my wit out of my head in futile search. He was much too tactful to remind me of his warnings, but did not cease to show me all sorts of reasonable grounds for Virginia's conduct, which had the effect of keeping his first prognostication always before me. "The girl," he said--I repeat the sum of his many discourses--"is evidently a good girl, and of strong character. She is perfectly reasonable. She married you--I take that for granted--when you were broken, beyond all prospect of repair. She now finds you restored to your proper station in the world, and will be no party to pulling you off your throne. She sees very well how that must end--unhappily. How can she hope to be a companion of your companions, a friend of your friends, a sharer in your amusements? Mistress she might be, your toy; wife she can never be. That parade of her neck and bosom-- a desperate measure I assure you--shows to my mind that you will never possess her again, but as you would not care to do. You assure me that you married her, you name the church, describe the rites. All seems to be in order; but the more I understand your Virginia in these late proceedings, the less I understand that wedding in the Ghetto. Everything I learn of her from her own acts convinces me of her good sense; but of her acts as reported by you, Don Francis, I reserve my judgment." My heart and whole mind being now set upon finding her, my chagrin may be imagined when Fra Palamone returned without her. He demanded money to prosecute his researches beyond the confines of Arezzo. "She's a deep one," he said, "she's as deep as the sea. Who can tell where she is by now? May be in Venice, may be in Rome, may be in the attics of this inn." I gave him twenty guineas, and he disappeared again for ten days. At the end of that time he returned once more, horribly dishevelled, dirty and extended. He looked to be just out and about again after a ruinous debauch. He talked in hollow whispers, he trembled in the limbs, he started and turned pale at a shadow, or the sound of a mouse in the wainscot. He said he had been to Ancona, Gubbio, Rimini, Ravenna, Chioggia, Venice, Udine, Trieste. He demanded money--fifty guineas; but this time I gave him nothing. I was preparing to go to Florence, and had other agents than him in view. I dismissed him from my service, and told him to go to the devil. He left me for the moment, vowing as he did it that he should never, never quit my service, and I found that it was no easier to get rid of him now than it had ever been. I saw him on the morrow; I saw him every day. The more I saw of him the more I abhorred him; and the more I made this plain the more devoted he professed himself. Wherever I went he shadowed me. He lurked in the dark corners of churches where I made my devotions, or studied the monuments until I rose from my knees.