t idea
made me feel the deepest shame, yet, whenever I thought of it, I could
not help admitting that such a supposition, however false, was not
wanting in probability. It is owing to that feeling that you found me so
reserved towards you, for I was afraid that you might harbour that
fearful idea if I allowed, you to read in my looks the favourable
impression which you had made on my heart."

"Then it was not owing to a feeling of self-love?"

"No, I confess it, for you could but judge me as I deserved. I had been
guilty of the folly now known to you because my father-in-law intended to
bury me in a convent, and that did not suit my taste. But, dearest
friend, you must forgive me if, I cannot confide even to you the history
of my life."

"I respect your secret, darling; you need not fear any intrusion from me
on that subject. All we have to do is to love one another, and not to
allow any dread of the future to mar our actual felicity."

The next day, after a night of intense enjoyment, I found myself more
deeply in love than before, and the next three months were spent by us in
an intoxication of delight.

At nine o'clock the next morning the teacher of Italian was announced. I
saw a man of respectable appearance, polite, modest, speaking little but
well, reserved in his answers, and with the manners of olden times. We
conversed, and I could not help laughing when he said, with an air of
perfect good faith, that a Christian could only admit the system of
Copernicus as a clever hypothesis. I answered that it was the system of
God Himself because it was that of nature, and that it was not in Holy
Scripture that the laws of science could be learned.

The teacher smiled in a manner which betrayed the Tartufe, and if I had
consulted only my own feelings I should have dismissed the poor man, but
I thought that he might amuse Henriette and teach her Italian; after all
it was what I wanted from him. My dear wife told him that she would give
him six libbre for a lesson of two hours: the libbra of Parma being worth
only about threepence, his lessons were not very expensive. She took her
first lesson immediately and gave him two sequins, asking him to purchase
her some good novels.

Whilst my dear Henriette was taking her lesson, I had some conversation
with the dressmaker, in order to ascertain whether she was a relative of
mine.

"What does your husband do?" I asked her.

"He is steward to the Marquis of Sissa."

"I