the house at nine and returned at noon.  He left it again at two in the afternoon and returned at nine in the evening; he supped; he went to bed on the stroke of ten.  Except on Sundays, high festivals, the first, the middle, and the last day of carnival, through all the time of my acquaintance with him, I never knew him break these habits but once, and that was when his mother died at Mestre and he had to attend the funeral.  On that occasion he must rise at six, and miss his dinner at noon.  He was furious, I never saw a man so angry.

I cannot tell how or when it was that I first spent the whole of my afternoons in Aurelia’s society, nor how or when it was that, instead of leaving her house at seven in the evening, I stayed on with her till the stroke of nine, within a few minutes of the doctor’s homecoming.  It is a thing as remarkable as true that nothing is easier to form than a habit, and nothing more difficult to break.  Formed and unbroken these habits were, unheeded by ourselves, but not altogether unperceived.  There was one member of the household who perceived them, and never approved.  I remember that old Nonna used to shake her finger at us as we sat reading, and how she used to call out the progress of the quarters from the kitchen, where she was busy with her master’s supper.  But my beloved mistress could not, and I would not, take any warning.  It became a sort of joke between Aurelia and me to see whether Nonna would miss one of the quarters.  She never did; and as often as not, when nine struck and I not gone, she would bundle me out of doors by the shoulders and scold her young mistress in shrill Venetian, loud enough for me to hear at my own chamber door.  Aurelia used to tell me all she had said next morning.  She had an excellent gift of mimicry; could do Nonna and (I grieve to say) the doctor to the life.

The end of this may be guessed.  Privilege after privilege was carelessly accorded by Aurelia, and greedily possessed by me.  At the end of six months’ residence those three still evening hours existed, not for the blessedness of such intercourse alone, but to be crowned by the salutation of an adorable hand; and when I retired at last, it was not to my bed, but to my window; to the velvet spaces of the night, to the rustling trees, the eloquent congress of the stars; to sigh my secret abroad to those sympathetic witnesses, to whisper her name, to link it with my own; to tell, in a word, to the deep-bosomed dark all the daring fancies of a young man intoxicated with first love.  And from privilege to privilege I strode, a fine conqueror.  A very few months more, and not only was I for ever with Aurelia, but there was no doubt nor affectation of concealment on my part of how I stood or wished to stand before her.  I postulated myself, in fine, as her servant in amours—­cavalier I will not say, for that has an odious meaning in Italy, than which to describe my position nothing could be wider of the truth.  I did but ask liberty to adore, sought nothing further, and got nothing else.  This, upon my honour, was ever the sum of my offence—­up to my last day of bliss.