the window if he attacked him, and hurried away to publish the document that avenged him. Leoni was at once dispossessed, and ordered to restore all that he had expended of the property, that is to say, three fourths of it. As he was unable to comply, he tried to fly, but in vain. He was put into prison, and it was from the prison that he wrote to me, not all the details which I have given you and which I learned afterward, but a few words in which he depicted the horror of his position. If I did not go to his aid, he might languish all his life in the most horrible captivity, for he no longer had the means to procure the comforts with which we had been able to surround ourselves at the time of our former confinement. His friends had abandoned him and perhaps were glad to be rid of him. He was absolutely without resources, in a damp cell, where he was already very ill with fever. His jewels, even his linen had been sold; he had almost nothing to protect him from the cold. I started at once. As I had never intended to settle definitively in Brussels, and as naught but the indolence of grief had delayed me there for half a year, I had converted almost all of my inheritance into cash; I had often thought of using it to found a hospital for penitent girls, and to become a nun therein. At other times I had thought of depositing it in the Bank of France, and purchasing an inalienable annuity for Leoni, which would keep him from want and villainy forever. I should have retained for myself only a modest annuity, and have buried myself alone in the Swiss valley where the memory of my happiness would assist me to endure the horror of solitude. When I learned the new disaster that had befallen Leoni, I felt that my love and anxiety for him sprang into life, more intense than ever. I sent all my fortune to a banking house at Milan. I reserved only a sufficient amount to double the pension which my father had bequeathed to my aunt. That amount was represented, to her great satisfaction, by the house in which we lived and in which she had passed half of her life. I abandoned it to her and set out to join Leoni. She did not ask me where I was going; she knew only too well; she did not try to detain me, she did not thank me, she simply pressed my hand; but when I turned to look back, I saw rolling slowly down her wrinkled cheek the first tear I had ever known her to shed. XXII