A servant having taken me to his room, he gave me the most friendly welcome, and reproached me in a friendly manner for not having shewn myself the evening before.  After that, he spoke again of his affairs, and made me look at a heap of papers and documents; I found it very wearisome.

“If you make up your mind to sign the three bills of exchange,” he said, “I will take you as a partner in my contract.”

By this extraordinary mark of friendship, he was offering me—­at least he said so—­an income of five thousand florins a year; but my only answer was to beg that the matter should never be mentioned again.  I was going to take leave of him, when he said that he wished to introduce me to his mother and sister.

He left the room, and came back with them.  The mother was a respectable, simple-looking woman, but the daughter was a perfect beauty; she literally dazzled me.  After a few minutes, the over-trustful mother begged leave to retire, and her daughter remained.  In less than half an hour I was captivated; her perfection delighted me; her lively wit, her artless reasoning, her candour, her ingenuousness, her natural and noble feelings, her cheerful and innocent quickness, that harmony which arises from beauty, wit, and innocence, and which had always the most powerful influence over me—­everything in fact conspired to make me the slave of the most perfect woman that the wildest dreams could imagine.

Mdlle.  C——­ C——­ never went out without her mother who, although very pious, was full of kind indulgence.  She read no books but her father’s—­a serious man who had no novels in his library, and she was longing to read some tales of romance.  She had likewise a great wish to know Venice, and as no one visited the family she had never been told that she was truly a prodigy of beauty.  Her brother was writing while I conversed with her, or rather answered all the questions which she addressed to me, and which I could only satisfy by developing the ideas that she already had, and that she was herself amazed to find in her own mind, for her soul had until then been unconscious of its own powers.  Yet I did not tell her that she was lovely and that she interested me in the highest degree, because I had so often said the same to other women, and without truth, that I was afraid of raising her suspicions.

I left the house with a sensation of dreamy sadness; feeling deeply moved by the rare qualities I had discovered in that charming girl, I promised myself not to see her again, for I hardly thought myself the man to sacrifice my liberty entirely and to ask her in marriage, although I certainly believed her endowed with all the qualities necessary to minister to my happiness.