"About the time when my letters had first failed to come to me, a young Polish count had arrived in Fichtenau and taken the rooms in the old schoolmaster's house which I had occupied. Soon the whole town had been full of him, of his beauty and his wealth. They had teased Leonora about her handsome lodger, but she had rebuked all such jests on the part of her young friends with great indignation. Soon, however, they no longer dared to say openly to her what they thought about her relations to the young count, but only whispered it about with bated breath that they had been seen together late at night at such and such places, and that the gold chain which she was now wearing had not been in her possession before. And then came a day on which they had no longer whispered, but proclaimed aloud in the streets, that the schoolmaster's Leonora had eloped the night before with the handsome count, and that her poor old father, a confirmed invalid, had been so deeply affected by the news as to be dangerously ill. A few days later the old man had really died. Of Leonora nothing had been heard since that night. "Fortunately the name of the count was well known, and that was all I desired in order to carry out my plan of revenge. I took what little remained of my fortune and began my travels--first to Warsaw. There the count was very well known; they described him to me as a profligate young man, who made it the business of his life to seduce beautiful women. An acquaintance added, that he had seen him about two years before in Venice in company with a beautiful lady, who might have been Leonora from his description.