By such petty agitations did the coming of Leoni, and the unhappy destiny that he brought, begin to disturb the profound peace in which I had always lived. I will not tell you with so much detail what happened on the following days. I do not remember so well, and the insatiable passion that I conceived for him always seems to me like a strange dream which no effort of my reason can reduce to order. This much is certain, that Leoni was visibly piqued, surprised and disconcerted by my coldness, and that he began at once to treat me with a respect which satisfied my wounded pride. I saw him every day at parties or out walking, and my aversion to him speedily vanished before the extraordinary civilities and humble attentions with which he overwhelmed me. In vain did my aunt try to put me on my guard against the arrogance of which she accused him. I was no longer capable of feeling insulted by his manners or his words; even his face had lost that suggestion of sarcasm which had offended me at first. His glance acquired from day to day an indescribable gentleness and affectionateness. He seemed to think of nothing but me; he even sacrificed his taste for card-playing, and passed whole nights dancing with my mother and me or talking with us. He was soon invited to call at our house. I dreaded his call a little. My aunt prophesied that he would find in our home a thousand subjects of ridicule which he would pretend not to notice but which would furnish him with material for joking with his friends. He came, and, to cap the climax, my father, who was standing at his shop-door, brought him into the house that way. That house, which belonged to us, was very handsome, and my mother had had it decorated with exquisite taste; but my father, who took no pleasure in anything outside of his business, was unwilling to transfer to any other building his cases of pearls and diamonds. That curtain of sparkling jewels behind the glass panels which guarded it was a magnificent spectacle, and my father said truly enough that there could be no more splendid decoration for a ground-floor. My mother, who had had hitherto only transitory flashes of ambition to be allied to the nobility, had never been humiliated to see her name carved in huge letters just below the balcony of her bedroom. But when, from that balcony, she saw Leoni cross the threshold of the fatal shop, she thought that we were lost and looked anxiously at me. V