Then I give her her liberty, and treating her to some very pleasant caresses, I ask her to have the same kindness for me, and she goes to work with a smile on her pretty lips.

“Tell me you love me,” I say to her.

“No, I do not, for you are an atheist, and hell awaits you.”

The weather was fine again, and the elements calm; I kissed her hands and told her that the postillion had certainly not seen anything, and that I was sure I had cured her of her dread of thunder, but that she was not likely to reveal the secret of my remedy.  She answered that one thing at least was certain, namely that no other woman had ever been cured by the same prescription.

“Why,” I said, “the same remedy has very likely been applied a million of times within the last thousand years.  To tell you the truth, I had somewhat depended upon it, when we entered the chaise together, for I did not know any other way of obtaining the happiness of possessing you.  But console yourself with the belief that, placed in the same position, no frightened woman could have resisted.”

“I believe you; but for the future I will travel only with my husband.”

“You would be wrong, for your husband would not have been clever enough to cure your fright in the way I have done.”

“True, again.  One learns some curious things in your company; but we shall not travel tete-a-tete again.”

We reached Pasean an hour before our friends.  We get out of the chaise, and my fair mistress ran off to her chamber, while I was looking for a crown for the postillion.  I saw that he was grinning.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Oh! you know.”

“Here, take this ducat and keep a quiet tongue in your head.”

CHAPTER VI

My Grandmother’s Death and Its Consequences I Lose M. de Malipiero’s Friendship—­I Have No Longer a Home—­La Tintoretta—­I Am Sent to a Clerical Seminary—­I Am Expelled From It, and Confined in a Fortress

During supper the conversation turned altogether upon the storm, and the official, who knew the weakness of his wife, told me that he was quite certain I would never travel with her again.  “Nor I with him,” his wife remarked, “for, in his fearful impiety, he exorcised the lightning with jokes.”

Henceforth she avoided me so skilfully that I never could contrive another interview with her.

When I returned to Venice I found my grandmother ill, and I had to change all my habits, for I loved her too dearly not to surround her with every care and attention; I never left her until she had breathed her last.  She was unable to leave me anything, for during her life she had given me all she could, and her death compelled me to adopt an entirely different mode of life.

A month after her death, I received a letter from my mother informing me that, as there was no probability of her return to Venice, she had determined to give up the house, the rent of which she was still paying, that she had communicated her intention to the Abbe Grimani, and that I was to be guided entirely by his advice.