passed off in that position, and I cannot express what have been my sufferings, for you, of course, urged me to come, and I was always under the painful necessity of disappointing you.  I even feared to find myself alone with you, for I felt certain that I could not have refrained from telling you the cause of the change in my conduct.  To crown my misery, add that I found myself compelled, at least once a week, to receive the vile Cordiani outside of my room, and to speak to him, in order to check his impatience with a few words.  At last, unable to bear up any longer under such misery, threatened likewise by you, I determined to end my agony.  I wished to disclose to you all this intrigue, leaving to you the care of bringing a change for the better, and for that purpose I proposed that you should accompany me to the ball disguised as a girl, although I knew it would enrage Cordiani; but my mind was made up.  You know how my scheme fell to the ground.  The unexpected departure of my brother with my father suggested to both of you the same idea, and it was before receiving Cordiani’s letter that I promised to come to you.  Cordiani did not ask for an appointment; he only stated that he would be waiting for me in my closet, and I had no opportunity of telling him that I could not allow him to come, any more than I could find time to let you know that I would be with you only after midnight, as I intended to do, for I reckoned that after an hour’s talk I would dismiss the wretch to his room.  But my reckoning was wrong; Cordiani had conceived a scheme, and I could not help listening to all he had to say about it.  His whining and exaggerated complaints had no end.  He upbraided me for refusing to further the plan he had concocted, and which he thought I would accept with rapture if I loved him.  The scheme was for me to elope with him during holy week, and to run away to Ferrara, where he had an uncle who would have given us a kind welcome, and would soon have brought his father to forgive him and to insure our happiness for life.  The objections I made, his answers, the details to be entered into, the explanations and the ways and means to be examined to obviate the difficulties of the project, took up the whole night.  My heart was bleeding as I thought of you; but my conscience is at rest, and I did nothing that could render me unworthy of your esteem.  You cannot refuse it to me, unless you believe that the confession I have just made is untrue; but you would be both mistaken and unjust.  Had I made up my mind to sacrifice myself and to grant favours which love alone ought to obtain, I might have got rid of the treacherous wretch within one hour, but death seemed preferable to such a dreadful expedient.  Could I in any way suppose that you were outside of my door, exposed to the wind and to the snow?  Both of us were deserving of pity, but my misery was still greater than yours.  All these fearful circumstances were written in the book of fate, to make me lose my reason,