Perhaps I should be silent; but you seem to love La Felina so truly, and a young man who really loves is so interesting that I will tell you all.' The circumlocution of this woman almost ran me mad! She finally said: 'My mistress was afraid some of her lovers would follow her, and wishing to conceal the route she had gone, took the idea of substituting me for herself, and sent me to Rome, where she is to write me her destination. You followed me instead of her. She was right, and had good reason to act as she did.' 'Then she has not yet left,' asked I, thinking of a means to rejoin her. 'She was to leave Naples,' said the woman, 'an hour after me, and is, no doubt, now far from the city.' 'And does she travel alone on these dangerous roads?' said I. 'Oh, no, she travels with him.' 'With him! of whom, for heaven's sake, do you speak?' 'Ah,' said the woman, 'La Felina would never forgive me if I told you. He, too, might make me pay dearly for my indiscretion.' I begged, I besought the woman to conceal nothing from me, and gave her all the money I had, promising to increase the sum tenfold. She yielded at last, and told me that _La Felina_ had left Naples with her lover. Her lover! do you hear?" continued Taddeo, in a delirium of rage, "and her lover is the minister of police, the Duke of Palma." "More perfidious than the water!" said Monte-Leone, contemptuously. "Poor Taddeo!" "Do not pity me," said the latter, in a paroxysm of terrible rage. "I was to be pitied when I loved her, when a divinity dwelt in my soul, when my love was ecstatic and endowed her with an innocence, which my reason told me she did not possess. I was fool enough to deceive myself. Now this woman to be sure is but a woman; she is less than feminine, as the mistress of a rich and powerful noble, the Duke of Palmo. Love might have killed me, but contempt has stifled love." His head fell on his chest, and he wept. He wept as man weeps for a departed passion, which has vivified his heart, but which yields to death, or worse still, another passion. "My friend," said Monte-Leone, "your grief is cruel, but I suffer more intensely!" Monte-Leone told Taddeo what had taken place at Sorrento.