The boatmen threatened me with a fresh storm; but setting everything at defiance I took a four-oared boat, and reached my dwelling quite safe but shivering with cold and wet to the skin.  I had scarcely been in my room for a quarter of an hour when the messenger from Muran presented herself and gave me a letter, telling me that she would call for the answer in two hours.  That letter was a journal of seven pages, the faithful translation of which might weary my readers, but here is the substance of it: 

After the interview with M. de Bragadin, the father of C——­ C——­ had gone home, had his wife and daughter to his room, and enquired kindly from the last where she had made my acquaintance.  She answered that she had seen me five or six times in her brother’s room, that I had asked her whether she would consent to be my wife, and that she had told me that she was dependent upon her father and mother.  The father had then said that she was too young to think of marriage, and besides, I had not yet conquered a position in society.  After that decision he repaired to his son’s room, and locked the small door inside as well as the one communicating with the apartment of the mother, who was instructed by him to let me believe that she had gone to the country, in case I should call on her.

Two days afterwards he came to C——­ C——­, who was beside her sick mother, and told her that her aunt would take her to a convent, where she was to remain until a husband had been provided for her by her parents.  She answered that, being perfectly disposed to submit to his will, she would gladly obey him.  Pleased with her ready obedience he promised to go and see her, and to let his mother visit her likewise, as soon as her health was better.  Immediately after that conversation the aunt had called for her, and a gondola had taken them to the convent, where she had been ever since.  Her bed and her clothes had been brought to her; she was well pleased with her room and with the nun to whom she had been entrusted, and under whose supervision she was.  It was by her that she had been forbidden to receive either letters or visits, or to write to anybody, under penalty of excommunication from the Holy Father, of everlasting damnation, and of other similar trifles; yet the same nun had supplied her with paper, ink and books, and it was at night that my young friend transgressed the laws of the convent in order to write all these particulars to me.  She expressed her conviction respecting the discretion and the faithfulness of the messenger, and she thought that she would remain devoted, because, being poor, our sequins were a little fortune for her.