"My resolution was instantly formed. I had nothing more to win and nothing to lose in Germany, where my political cure was to be completed by a prohibition to teach publicly during the next five years. My means had been nearly consumed during my long wanderings; there was only a small remnant left, but I might spend that sum just as well in Italy as elsewhere; besides, I hoped to derive abroad some advantages from my knowledge of languages; and, finally, I had no choice. I would have rather endured extreme suffering than to omit doing anything that could benefit Leonora. A few days later we were on our way to Italy. "I settled down a few miles from Genoa, upon the coast of the glorious Mediterranean. I was fortunate enough to obtain a few lessons in the family of a rich Englishman, who had come to the place for the same reasons which brought me there, and thus I was relieved of all anxiety on the score of money. All the greater was my anxiety for Leonora. "Our flight from Paris had been so sudden, and was for Leonora so entirely the result of a momentary impulse--her sickness, following immediately afterwards, had so completely broken down all her energies that she had willingly acceded to all my arrangements, and was only now coming to a clear understanding of our situation--I had not thought of it at first, and became aware of it only now through Leonora's manner towards me--that in this dependence on a man whom she had shamefully betrayed, and in the constant company of him before whom she would have loved to hide herself in the lowest depth, she suffered probably the severest punishment that could have been inflicted upon a person in whom the last spark of honor and self-respect was not extinguished. Leonora did not hesitate to say so; but she added, 'the punishment is severe but just; it was the only way, perhaps, to teach me how grievously I had sinned against you.' While Leonora found thus a soothing comfort for her conscience in her deep repentance, I had in my unspeakable sorrow only one very modest consolation: to act towards Leonora as my conscience dictated. I was at liberty to drain the cup of sorrow to the very last drop. That was the fulfilment of all the precious happiness of which I had dreamt so much in the golden days of Fichtenau, and even later in the dark nights of my imprisonment in the fortress! This pale, feeble form--that walked slowly along the sea-coast in the evening sunlight, hanging on my arm and never lifting up the weary head--she by whose sick-bed I sat watching day after day, when sickness confined her in her room, and in whose broken heart it had become my duty to pour soothing balm, of which I stood so much in need myself--this was the girl whom I had chosen to be my wife, and in whom I had worshipped, full of bright hopes, the mother of my children. Oh, Oswald! Oswald! the most fanatical optimist might have been appalled--the most orthodox soul might have been led to doubt if there