This story was a confirmation of a theory of mine namely, that the most important events in our lives proceed often from the most trifling causes.  My epistle was nothing better than a number of lines of poetry more or less well written, and the being I had delineated was certainly not to be found, as he surpassed by far all human perfections, but a woman’s heart travels so quickly and so far!  Mdlle.  X. C. V. took the thing literally, and fell in love with a chimera of goodness, and then was fain to turn this into a real lover, not thinking of the vast difference between the ideal and the real.  For all that, when she thought that she had found the original of my fancy portrait, she had no difficulty in endowing him with all the good qualities I had pictured.  Of course Mdlle.  X. C. V. would have fallen in love if I had never written her a letter in verse, but she would have done so in a different manner, and probably with different results.

As soon as dinner was served we were summoned to do justice to the choice fish which M. de la Popeliniere had provided.  Madame X. C. V. a narrowminded Greek, was naturally bigoted and superstitious.  In the mind of a silly woman the idea of an alliance between the most opposite of beings, God and the Devil, seems quite natural.  A priest had told her that, since she had converted her husband, her salvation was secure, for the Scriptures solemnly promised a soul for a soul to every one who would lead a heretic or a heathen within the fold of the church.  And as Madame X. C. V. had converted her husband, she felt no anxiety about the life of the world to come, as she had done all that was necessary.  However, she ate fish on the days appointed; the reason being that she preferred it to flesh.

Dinner over, I returned to the lady’s bedside, and there stayed till nearly nine o’clock, keeping my passions well under control all the time.  I was foppish enough to think that her feelings were as lively as mine, and I did not care to shew myself less self-restrained than she, though I knew then, as I know now, that this was a false line of argument.  It is the same with opportunity as with fortune; one must seize them when they come to us, or else they go by, often to return no more.

Not seeing Farsetti at the table, I suspected there had been a quarrel, and I asked my sweetheart about it; but she told me I was mistaken in supposing they had quarreled with him, and that the reason of his absence was that he would never leave his house on a Friday.  The deluded man had had his horoscope drawn, and learning by it that he would be assassinated on a Friday he resolved always to shut himself up on that day.  He was laughed at, but persisted in the same course till he died four years ago at the age of seventy.  He thought to prove by the success of his precautions that a man’s destiny depends on his discretion, and on the precautions he takes to avoid the misfortunes of which he has had warning.