frighten you if you were alone; we must throw money from the window to this populace which has no other bed than the ice-covered parapets of the bridges, so that the spectacle of its misery may not make us sad amid our well-being. Allow yourself to be cheered by our laughter and lulled to sleep by our songs; be good and do not worry; I will undertake to arrange your life and make it pleasant to you, even if I am unable to make it intoxicating. Be my wife and my mistress at Venice; you shall be my angel and my nymph again among the glaciers of Switzerland." XI By such speeches he allayed my anxiety and led me, fascinated and confiding, to the brink of the abyss. I thanked him lovingly for the trouble he took to persuade me, when he could make me obey with a sign. We embraced affectionately and returned to the salon where our friends awaited us to part us. However, as the days succeeded one another, Leoni did not take the same trouble to reconcile me to them. He paid less attention to my growing discontent, and when I mentioned it to him, he argued with me less gently. One day indeed he was short with me and bitter; I saw that I offended him; I determined to complain no more; but I began to suffer really and to be genuinely unhappy. I waited with resignation until Leoni snatched a few moments to come to me. To be sure he was so kind and loving at those times that I deemed myself foolish and cowardly to have suffered so. My courage and my confidence would revive for a few days; but those days of encouragement became more and more infrequent. Leoni, seeing that I was meek and submissive, still treated me with consideration; but he no longer noticed my melancholy. Ennui devoured me, Venice became hateful to me; its canals, its gondolas, its sky, everything about it was distasteful. During the nights of card-playing I wandered alone on the terrace at the top of the house; I shed bitter tears; I recalled my home, my heedless youth, my kind, foolish mother, my poor father, so loving and so good-natured, and even my aunt, with her petty worries and her long sermons. It seemed to me that I was really homesick, that I longed to fly, to go home and throw myself at my parents' feet, to forget Leoni forever. But if a window opened below me, if Leoni, weary of the game and the heat, came out on the balcony to breathe the fresh air from the canal, I would lean over the rail to look at him, and my heart would beat as during the first days of my passion, when he crossed the threshold of my father's house; if the moon shone upon him and enabled me to distinguish that noble figure beneath the rich fancy costume that he always wore in his own palace, I would thrill with pride and pleasure as on the evening that he led me into that ball-room from which we went forth never to return; if his melodious voice, murmuring a measure from some song, rebounded from the resonant marbles of Venice and rose to my ears, I would feel the tears flowing