THE LAST OF THE ALDINIS INTRODUCTION Novels are always works of the fancy to some extent, and some of the fanciful conceits of the imagination are like clouds that pass over our heads. Whence come the clouds, and whither do they go? Walking through the forest of Fontainebleau one day, with my son, I dreamed about something very different from this book, which I wrote that same evening in a tavern, and forgot the next morning, to think only of flowers and butterflies. I could describe minutely all our walks and all our amusements, but it is impossible for me to say why my mind flitted to Venice that evening. I might look about for a good reason, but it is more honest to confess that I remember nothing about it. It was some fifteen or sixteen years ago. GEORGE SAND Nohant, August 23, 1853 _To SIGNORA CARLOTTA MARLIANI_ CONSULESSA DI SPAGNA The sailors of the Adriatic do not launch a new vessel until it is embellished with the image of the Virgin. May your name, written upon this page, O my dear and lovely friend, be like the effigy of the divine patron saint, which protects a fragile bark abandoned to the capricious waves. GEORGE SAND FIRST PART At the time of this story, Signor Lelio was no longer in the first bloom of youth; whether because his lungs, by dint of performing their duty with generous zeal, had developed in such a way as to distend the muscles of his chest, or because of the great care with which singers look after the preservation of the organ of melody, his body, which he jocosely called the _casket_ of his voice, had acquired a reasonable degree of embonpoint. His leg, however, had retained all the elegance of its shape, and the habitual grace of all his movements made him still what the ladies, under the empire, called a _beau cavalier_.