He nevertheless took my hand and kissed it devotedly immediately afterwards he had fallen upon my discarded trifles.

“Excellency!  Excellency!” he cried, gasping, “what bounty! what splendour of soul!” He fingered my watch, listened to it.  “It goes yet—­ it is a famous watch!” He babbled like a happy child.  “Mechlin stuff, every thread of it!” He smoothed out the lace ends of my cravat.  So he ran through the silly things one after another—­shoes which he could not wear, a sword which he could not use, a coat which must exhibit him a monkey—­he grovelled before me and would have kissed my foot, but that I shrank from him in disgust.  “Horrible, venal Venetian,” I said, “thou hast shown me one more degraded than I.”  He was out of sight with his bundle of treasures before I could finish my reproof, and I busied myself with my last preparations.

I wrote two letters:  the first was to Dr. Lanfranchi, the second to my father.  To the doctor I said what was, I think, becoming, namely, that his wife was as spotless as the snow, and that the very blackness of my guilt did but show her whiteness more dazzling.  I added an expression of my undying sorrow for having brought misfortune upon her whom I must always love, and him whom I had once respected, and assured him that I did not intend to rest until I had repaired it.  This I addressed to the university.

I explained briefly to my father the reason of my temporary absence from Padua; and upon reconsideration of my plans, desiring to avoid any affectation of extravagance, added a cloak, a small bundle of clean linen, a staff and a few gold pieces to my thin equipment.  At four o’clock in the afternoon I went out into the street and directed my steps towards the gate of San Zuan.

Leaving Padua, I turned and looked for the last time upon her domes and towers.  “Farewell, once proud city, now brought low by my deed,” I said.  “Keep, if thou must, the accursed memory and name of Francis Antony Strelley, gentleman—­Poisoner of Homes, Stabber-in-secret, Traitor in Love.  I leave him behind me for the worst thou canst do.  He that quits thee now is another than he:  Francesco Ignoto, Pilgrim, in need of Grace.”

Then I addressed myself stoutly to the hills; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark that the further I pushed the more certainly I recovered my spirits.  I suppose there never was yet in this world a young man to whom the future did not appeal more urgently than the present, or who would not rather undertake an adventure without a shilling to his name than in his post-chaise and four.  It is, I take it, of the essence of romance that the lady’s castle-prison of enchantment lies beyond the forest, across the hills or over sea; and most assuredly that damsel who is to be won by means of a courier leading a spare horse is as little worth your pains as she whose price is half a guinea.  I, in that commencement of my pilgrimage, then, was happy because I was doing something, and hopeful because I could not see my way!