The very next day I resolved on insuring Christine's happiness without
making her my wife. I had thought of marrying her when I loved her better
than myself, but after obtaining possession the balance was so much on my
side that my self-love proved stronger than my love for Christine. I
could not make up my mind to renounce the advantages, the hopes which I
thought were attached to my happy independence. Yet I was the slave of
sentiment. To abandon the artless, innocent girl seemed to me an awful
crime of which I could not be guilty, and the mere idea of it made me
shudder. I was aware that she was, perhaps, bearing in her womb a living
token of our mutual love, and I shivered at the bare possibility that her
confidence in me might be repaid by shame and everlasting misery.

I bethought myself of finding her a husband in every way better than
myself; a husband so good that she would not only forgive me for the
insult I should thus be guilty of towards her, but also thank me at the
end, and like me all the better for my deceit.

To find such a husband could not be very difficult, for Christine was not
only blessed with wonderful beauty, and with a well-established
reputation for virtue, but she was also the possessor of a fortune
amounting to four thousand Venetian ducats.

Shut up in a room with the three worshippers of my oracle, I consulted
Paralis upon the affair which I had so much at heart. The answer was:

"Serenus must attend to it."

Serenus was the cabalistic name of M. de Bragadin, and the excellent man
immediately expressed himself ready to execute all the orders of Paralis.
It was my duty to inform him of those orders.

"You must," I said to him, "obtain from the Holy Father a dispensation
for a worthy and virtuous girl, so as to give her the privilege of
marrying during Lent in the church of her village; she is a young country
girl. Here is her certificate of birth. The husband is not yet known; but
it does not matter, Paralis undertakes to find one."

"Trust to me," said my father, "I will write at once to our ambassador in
Rome, and I will contrive to have my letter sent by special express. You
need not be anxious, leave it all to me, I will make it a business of
state, and I must obey Paralis all the more readily that I foresee that
the intended husband is one of us four. Indeed, we must prepare ourselves
to obey."

I had some trouble in keeping my laughter down, for it was in my power to
metam