leaning on his elbow, he kept silent, frowned, and
puckered his lips: so much the more did he confuse and amaze Telimena.
Suddenly she changed her countenance and the tone of her discourse; she
arose in wrath, and with sharp words began to shower on him sarcasms and
reproaches. Thaddeus, too, started up, as if stung by a wasp; he looked
askance; without saying a word he spat, kicked away his chair, and bolted
from the room, slamming the door behind him. Luckily no one of the guests
paid attention to this scene except Telimena.

Flying out through the gate, he ran straight into the field. As a pike,
when a fisherman's spear pierces through its breast, plunges and dives,
thinking to escape, but everywhere drags with it the iron and the line; so
Thaddeus bore with him his troubles, as he ploughed through the ditches
and vaulted the fences, without aim or path; until, after wandering for no
small time, he finally entered the depths of the wood, and, whether on
purpose or by chance, happened on the little hill which was the witness of
his yesterday's happiness, and where he had received that note, the
earnest of love: a place, as we know, called the Temple of Meditation.

When he glanced about, behold! there she was! It was Telimena, solitary,
buried in thought, and changed in pose and costume from her of yesterday:
dressed all in white, seated upon a stone, and motionless, as if herself
carved of stone, she had buried her face in her open hands; though you
could not hear her sobs you felt that she was dissolved in tears.

In vain did the heart of Thaddeus defend itself; he took pity, he felt
that compassion moved him. He long gazed without speaking, hidden behind a
tree; at last he sighed, and said to himself angrily: "Stupid, how is she
to blame if I deceived myself?" So he slowly thrust out his head towards
her from behind the tree. But suddenly Telimena tore herself from her
seat, threw herself to the right and the left, and jumped across the
stream; with outstretched arms and dishevelled hair, all pale, she rushed
for the wood, leapt into the air, knelt, and fell down; and, not being
able to get up again, she writhed on the turf. One could see by her
motions from what dreadful torture she was suffering; she seized herself
by the breast, the neck, the soles of her feet, her knees. Thaddeus sprang
towards her, thinking that she had gone mad or was having an epileptic
fit. But these movements proceeded from a different cau