At the dinner-table everyone spoke to me, and I fancied I had given proper answers to all, but, when the repast was over, the Abbe Gama invited me to take coffee in his own apartment.  The moment we were alone, he told me that all the guests I had met were worthy and honest men, and he asked me whether I believed that I had succeeded in pleasing the company.

“I flatter myself I have,” I answered.

“You are wrong,” said the abbe, “you are flattering yourself.  You have so conspicuously avoided the questions put to you that everybody in the room noticed your extreme reserve.  In the future no one will ask you any questions.”

“I should be sorry if it should turn out so, but was I to expose my own concerns?”

“No, but there is a medium in all things.”

“Yes, the medium of Horace, but it is often a matter of great difficulty to hit it exactly.”

“A man ought to know how to obtain affection and esteem at the same time.”

“That is the very wish nearest to my heart.”

“To-day you have tried for the esteem much more than for the affection of your fellow-creatures.  It may be a noble aspiration, but you must prepare yourself to fight jealousy and her daughter, calumny; if those two monsters do not succeed in destroying you, the victory must be yours.  Now, for instance, you thoroughly refuted Salicetti to-day.  Well, he is a physician, and what is more a Corsican; he must feel badly towards you.”

“Could I grant that the longings of women during their pregnancy have no influence whatever on the skin of the foetus, when I know the reverse to be the case?  Are you not of my opinion?”

“I am for neither party; I have seen many children with some such marks, but I have no means of knowing with certainty whether those marks have their origin in some longing experienced by the mother while she was pregnant.”

“But I can swear it is so.”

“All the better for you if your conviction is based upon such evidence, and all the worse for Salicetti if he denies the possibility of the thing without certain authority.  But let him remain in error; it is better thus than to prove him in the wrong and to make a bitter enemy of him.”

In the evening I called upon Lucrezia.  The family knew my success, and warmly congratulated me.  Lucrezia told me that I looked sad, and I answered that I was assisting at the funeral of my liberty, for I was no longer my own master.  Her husband, always fond of a joke, told her that I was in love with her, and his mother-in-law advised him not to show so much intrepidity.  I only remained an hour with those charming persons, and then took leave of them, but the very air around me was heated by the flame within my breast.  When I reached my room I began to write, and spent the night in composing an ode which I sent the next day to the advocate.  I was certain that he would shew it to his wife, who loved poetry, and who did not yet know that I was a poet.  I abstained from seeing her again for three or four days.  I was learning French, and making extracts from ministerial letters.