The language that he used to me was so novel to my ear that I was intoxicated by it. Perhaps my absolute ignorance up to that time of everything bordering on sentiment made that language seem more delicious and more extraordinary to me than it would have seemed to a more experienced girl. But I believe--and other women believed with me--that no man on earth ever felt and expressed love like Leoni. Superior to other men in evil and in good, he spoke another tongue, he had another expression, he had also another heart. I have heard an Italian woman say that a bouquet in Leoni's hand was more fragrant than in another man's, and it was so with everything. He gave lustre to the simplest things and rejuvenated the oldest. There was a prestige about him; I was neither able nor desirous to escape its influence. I began to love him with all my strength. At this period I seemed to grow in my own eyes. Whether it was the work of God, of Leoni, or of love, a vigorous mind developed and took possession of my feeble body. Every day I felt a world of new thoughts come to life within me. A word from Leoni gave birth to more sentiments than all the frivolous talk I had heard all my life. He observed my progress and was elated and proud over it. He sought to hasten it and brought me books. My mother looked at the gilt covers, the vellum and the pictures. She hardly glanced at the titles of the works which were destined to play havoc with my head and my heart. They were beautiful and pure books, almost all stories of women written by women: _Valérie_, _Eugène de Rothelin_, _Mademoiselle de Clermont_, _Delphine_. These touching and impassioned narratives, these glimpses of what was to me an ideal world, elevated my mind, but they devoured it. I became romantic, the most deplorable character that a woman can have. VI Three months had sufficed to bring about this metamorphosis. I was on the eve of marrying Leoni. Of all the documents he had promised to furnish, his certificate of birth and his patents of nobility alone had come to hand. As for the proofs of his wealth, he had written for them to another lawyer, and they had not arrived. He manifested extreme irritation and regret at this delay, which caused a further postponement of our wedding. One morning he came to our house with an air of desperation. He showed us an unstamped letter, which he had just received, he said, by a special messenger. This letter informed him that his man of business was dead, and that his successor, having found his papers in great disorder, had a difficult task before him to arrange them, that he asked a further delay of one or two weeks before he could furnish _his lordship_ with the documents he required. Leoni was frantic at this mischance; he would die of impatience and disappointment, he said, before the end of that frightful fortnight. He threw himself down in a chair and burst into tears.