That life was perfectly frightful, but I endured it. The tortures of jealousy had been unknown to me hitherto; now they awoke, and I exhausted them all. I spared Leoni the tedium of combating them; indeed I had not enough strength left to express them. I resolved to allow myself to die in silence; I felt sick enough to hope for death. Ennui consumed me at Milan, even more than at Venice; I suffered more, and had less distraction. Leoni lived openly with the Princess Zagarolo. He passed the evening in her box at the play, or at some ball with her. He made his escape to come to see me for an instant, then returned to sup with her, and did not come back to the hotel until six o'clock in the morning. He went to bed utterly exhausted and often in ill-humor. He rose at noon, taciturn and distraught, and went to drive with his mistress. I often saw them pass. Leoni when with her had the same discreetly triumphant air, the same coquettish bearing, the same fond and happy expression that he once had with me; now I had only his complaints and a narrative of his vexations. To be sure, I preferred to have him come to me careworn and disgusted by his slavery, to being tranquil and indifferent, as sometimes happened. It seemed at those times that he had forgotten the love he had once had for me and that which I still had for him. He found it altogether natural to confide to me the details of his intimacy with another, and did not perceive that the smile on my face as I listened to him was a mute convulsion of pain. One evening, at sunset, I was coming out of the cathedral, where I had prayed fervently to God to call me back to him and to accept my sufferings in expiation of my faults. I walked slowly through the magnificent portal and leaned from time to time against a pillar, for I was very weak. A slow fever was consuming me. The excitement of prayer and the atmosphere of the church had bathed me in a cold perspiration. I resembled a spectre risen from the sepulchral vaults of the edifice to look once more upon the last rays of the sun. A man who had been following me for some time, without attracting my attention particularly, spoke to me, and I turned, without surprise or alarm, with the apathy of a dying woman. I recognized Henryet. Instantly, the memory of my home and my family awoke in me with a violent throb. I forgot that young man's strange behavior towards me, the terrible power that he wielded over Leoni, his former love, which I had welcomed so coldly, and the detestation I had felt for him afterward. I thought only of my father and mother, and eagerly offering him my hand, I overwhelmed him with questions. He was in no hurry to reply, although he seemed touched by my emotion and my eagerness. "Are you alone here?" he said to me; "can I talk to you without exposing you to any danger?"