arter of
an hour. "I must copy that sonnet," he added, "indeed I must have it."

"The abbe," said the obliging marchioness, "will save you the trouble: I
will dictate it to him."

I prepared to write, but his eminence suddenly exclaimed, "My dear
marchioness, this is wonderful; he has kept the same rhymes as in your
own sonnet: did you observe it?"

The beautiful marchioness gave me then a look of such expression that she
completed her conquest. I understood that she wanted me to know the
cardinal as well as she knew him; it was a kind of partnership in which I
was quite ready to play my part.

As soon as I had written the sonnet under the charming woman's dictation,
I took my leave, but not before the cardinal had told me that he expected
me to dinner the next day.

I had plenty of work before me, for the ten stanzas I had to compose were
of the most singular character, and I lost no time in shutting myself up
in my room to think of them. I had to keep my balance between two points
of equal difficulty, and I felt that great care was indispensable. I had
to place the marchioness in such a position that she could pretend to
believe the cardinal the author of the stanzas, and, at the same time,
compel her to find out that I had written them, and that I was aware of
her knowing it. It was necessary to speak so carefully that not one
expression should breathe even the faintest hope on my part, and yet to
make my stanzas blaze with the ardent fire of my love under the thin veil
of poetry. As for the cardinal, I knew well enough that the better the
stanzas were written, the more disposed he would be to sign them. All I
wanted was clearness, so difficult to obtain in poetry, while a little
doubtful darkness would have been accounted sublime by my new Midas. But,
although I wanted to please him, the cardinal was only a secondary
consideration, and the handsome marchioness the principal object.

As the marchioness in her verses had made a pompous enumeration of every
physical and moral quality of his eminence, it was of course natural that
he should return the compliment, and here my task was easy. At last
having mastered my subject well, I began my work, and giving full career
to my imagination and to my feelings I composed the ten stanzas, and gave
the finishing stroke with these two beautiful lines from Ariosto:

Le angelicche bellezze nate al cielo
Non si ponno celar sotto alcum velo.

Rather pleased with