bosom she would say: 'Obey your heart, so that you may be happier than I was after breaking mine.'--You are touched, Lelio! O heaven! it was a tear that just fell on my hand. You are beaten, my dear! You see that I am neither mad, nor wicked; now you will say _yes_, and you will come and take me to-morrow. Swear it!" I tried to speak, but I could not find a word; I was shuddering from head to foot. I felt as if I were about to faint. With her eyes fixed upon me she anxiously awaited my reply. For my own part, I was completely crushed. At the very first words of her story, I had been struck by its strange resemblance to my own; but when she came to those incidents which it was impossible for me not to recognize, I was completely bewildered and dazzled, as if the lightning had struck close beside me. A thousand conflicting and sinister thoughts took possession of my brain. I saw images of crime and despair fluttering about before me like ghosts. Deeply moved by the memory of what had been, appalled at the thought of what might be, I imagined myself the mother's lover and the daughter's husband at the same time. Alezia, that child whom I had seen in her cradle, stood before me, talking in the same breath of her love and her mother's. A world of recollections crowded into my mind, and little Alezia appeared there as the object, even then, of a timid and unjoyful affection. I recalled her pride, her hatred of me, and the words she had said to me one day when she saw her father's ring on my finger. "Who can say," I thought, "that she has renounced her prejudices forever? It may be that if she should learn at this moment that I am Nello, her former servant, she would blush for loving me." "Signora," I said to her, "you used, you say, to be fond of piercing the hearts of your dolls with a long pin. Why did you do that?" "What do you care? why does that detail impress you particularly?" "Because my heart aches, and your pins naturally came to my mind." "I will tell you why it was, to show you that it was not a mere barbarous whim," she replied. "I used to hear it said, when a man did a cowardly thing, 'that's what it is to have no blood in the heart;' and I took that metaphorical expression literally. So when I scolded my dolls, I would say to them: 'you are cowards, and I am going to look and see if you have any blood in your hearts.'" "You despise cowards bitterly, don't you, signora?" I asked, wondering what her opinion of me would be some day if I should give way at that moment to her romantic passion. Once more I fell into a melancholy reverie. "What is the matter, in heaven's name?" said Alezia. Her voice recalled me to myself. I looked at her with streaming eyes. She was weeping too, but on account of my hesitation. I understood it at once, and I said, taking her hands with a paternal gesture: "O my child! do not accuse me! Do not doubt my poor heart! If you only knew how I am suffering!"