Next morning I got M. Bono to give me a bill of exchange on M. Querini’s order, and at dinner-time Marcoline handed it over to her new protector, who wrote her a formal receipt.  M. Morosini gave me the letters he had promised, and their departure was fixed for eleven o’clock the next day.  The reader may imagine that our dinner-party was not over gay.  Marcoline was depressed, I as gloomy as a splenetic Englishman, and between us we made the feast more like a funeral than a meeting of friends.

I will not attempt to describe the night I passed with my charmer.  She asked me again and again how I could be my own executioner; but I could not answer, for I did not know.  But how often have I done things which caused me pain, but to which I was impelled by some occult force it was my whim not to resist.

In the morning, when I had put on my boots and spurs, and told Clairmont not to be uneasy if I did not return that night, Marcoline and I drove to the ambassadors’ residence.  We breakfasted together, silently enough, for Marcoline had tears in her eyes, and everyone knowing my noble conduct towards her respected her natural grief.  After breakfast we set out, I sitting in the forepart of the carriage, facing Marcoline and Dame Veneranda, who would have made me laugh under any other circumstances, her astonishment at finding herself in a more gorgeous carriage than the ambassador’s was so great.  She expatiated on the elegance and comfort of the equipage, and amused us by saying that her master was quite right in saying that the people would take her for the ambassadress.  But in spite of this piece of comedy, Marcoline and I were sad all the way.  M. Querini, who did not like night travelling, made us stop at Pont-Boivoisin, at nine o’clock, and after a bad supper everyone went to bed to be ready to start at daybreak.  Marcoline was to sleep with Veneranda, so I accompanied her, and the worthy old woman went to bed without any ceremony, lying so close to the wall that there was room for two more; but after Marcoline had got into bed I sat down on a chair, and placing my head beside hers on the pillow we mingled our sobs and tears all night.

When Veneranda, who had slept soundly, awoke, she was much astonished to see me still in the same position.  She was a great devotee, but women’s piety easily gives place to pity, and she had moved to the furthest extremity of the bed with the intention of giving me another night of love.  But my melancholy prevented my profiting by her kindness.

I had ordered a saddle horse to be ready for me in the morning.  We took a hasty cup of coffee and bade each other mutual farewells.  I placed Marcoline in the carriage, gave her a last embrace, and waited for the crack of the postillion’s whip to gallop back to Lyons.  I tore along like a madman, for I felt as if I should like to send the horse to the ground and kill myself.  But death never comes to him that desires it, save in the fable of the worthy