On my reappearance, Madame Orio told me, with many heart-felt thanks, that I must for the future consider myself as a privileged and welcome friend, and the evening passed off very pleasantly.  As the hour for supper drew near, I excused myself so well that Madame Orio could not insist upon my accepting her invitation to stay.  Marton rose to light me out of the room, but her aunt, believing Nanette to be my favourite, gave her such an imperative order to accompany me that she was compelled to obey.  She went down the stairs rapidly, opened and closed the street door very noisily, and putting her light out, she reentered the sitting room, leaving me in darkness.  I went upstairs softly:  when I reached the third landing I found the chamber of the two sisters, and, throwing myself upon a sofa, I waited patiently for the rising of the star of my happiness.  An hour passed amidst the sweetest dreams of my imagination; at last I hear the noise of the street door opening and closing, and, a few minutes after, the two sisters come in with my Angela.  I draw her towards me, and caring for nobody else, I keep up for two full hours my conversation with her.  The clock strikes midnight; I am pitied for having gone so late supperless, but I am shocked at such an idea; I answer that, with such happiness as I am enjoying, I can suffer from no human want.  I am told that I am a prisoner, that the key of the house door is under the aunt’s pillow, and that it is opened only by herself as she goes in the morning to the first mass.  I wonder at my young friends imagining that such news can be anything but delightful to me.  I express all my joy at the certainty of passing the next five hours with the beloved mistress of my heart.  Another hour is spent, when suddenly Nanette begins to laugh, Angela wants to know the reason, and Marton whispering a few words to her, they both laugh likewise.  This puzzles me.  In my turn, I want to know what causes this general laughter, and at last Nanette, putting on an air of anxiety, tells me that they have no more candle, and that in a few minutes we shall be in the dark.  This is a piece of news particularly agreeable to me, but I do not let my satisfaction appear on my countenance, and saying how truly I am sorry for their sake, I propose that they should go to bed and sleep quietly under my respectful guardianship.  My proposal increases their merriment.

“What can we do in the dark?”

“We can talk.”

We were four; for the last three hours we had been talking, and I was the hero of the romance.  Love is a great poet, its resources are inexhaustible, but if the end it has in view is not obtained, it feels weary and remains silent.  My Angela listened willingly, but little disposed to talk herself, she seldom answered, and she displayed good sense rather than wit.  To weaken the force of my arguments, she was often satisfied with hurling at me a proverb, somewhat in the fashion of the Romans throwing the catapult.