Brigida looked well enough, but she was at least ten years older than the abbe.  She was very polite to me and did her best to convince me that the abbe was happy in the possession of her heart, and that they both enjoyed the delights of mutual love.

But when I asked him over a bottle of good wine about his affection for Brigida, he sighed, smiled, blushed, looked down, and finally confessed that this connection was the misfortune of his life.

“Misfortune?  Does she make you sigh in vain?  If so you should leave her, and thus regain your happiness.”

“How can I sigh?  I am not in love with her.  She is in love with me, and tries to make me her slave.”

“How do you mean?”

“She wants me to marry her, and I promised to do so, partly from weakness, and partly from pity; and now she is in a hurry.”

“I daresay; all these elderly girls are in a hurry.”

“Every evening she treats me to tears, supplications, and despair.  She summons me to keep my promise, and accuses me of deceiving her, so you may imagine that my situation is an unhappy one.”

“Have you any obligations towards her?”

“None whatever.  She has violated me, so to speak, for all the advances came from her.  She has only what her sister gives her from day to day, and if she got married she would not get that.”

“Have you got her with child?”

“I have taken good care not to do so, and that’s what has irritated her; she calls all my little stratagems detestable treason.”

“Nevertheless, you have made up your mind to marry her sooner or later?”

“I’d as soon hang myself.  If I got married to her I should be four times as poor as I am now, and all my relations at Novara would laugh at me for bringing home a wife of her age.  Besides, she is neither rich nor well born, and at Novara they demand the one or the other.”

“Then as a man of honour and as a man of sense, you ought to break with her, and the sooner the better.”

“I know, but lacking normal strength what am I to do?  If I did not go and sup with her to-night, she would infallibly come after me to see what had happened.  I can’t lock my door in her face, and I can’t tell her to go away.”

“No, but neither can go on in this miserable way.

“You must make up your mind, and cut the Gordian knot, like Alexander.”

“I haven’t his sword.”

“I will lend it you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen to me.  You must go and live in another town.  She will hardly go after you there, I suppose.”

“That is a very good plan, but flight is a difficult matter.”

“Difficult?  Not at all.  Do you promise to do what I tell you, and I will arrange everything quite comfortably.  Your mistress will not know anything about it till she misses you at supper.”

“I will do whatever you tell me, and I shall never forget your kindness; but Brigida will go mad with grief.”