y utmost to make our
nun take a reasonable view of things, dwelling on the risks I should run
in carrying her off and bringing her to Paris, where all his influence
would be of no avail to obtain for us that safety so indispensable to
happiness. I saw M---- M----; we shewed each other our letters, she had
some bitter tears, and her grief pierced me to the heart. I still had a
great love for her in spite of my daily infidelities, and when I thought
of those moments in which I had seen her given over to voluptuousness I
could not help pitying her fate as I thought of the days of despair in
store for her. But soon after this an event happened which gave rise to
some wholesome reflections. One day, when I had come to see her, she
said,

"They have just been burying a nun who died of consumption the day before
yesterday in the odour of sanctity. She was called 'Maria Concetta.' She
knew you, and told C---- C---- your name when you used to come to mass on
feast days. C---- C---- begged her to be discreet, but the nun told her
that you were a dangerous man, whose presence should be shunned by a
young girl. C---- C---- told me all this after the mask of Pierrot."

"What was this saint's name when she was in the world?"

"Martha."

"I know her."

I then told M---- M---- the whole history of my loves with Nanette and
Marton, ending with the letter she wrote me, in which she said that she
owed me, indirectly, that eternal salvation to which she hoped to attain.

In eight or ten days my conversation with my hostess'
daughter--conversation which took place on the balcony, and which
generally lasted till midnight--and the lesson I gave her every morning,
produced the inevitable and natural results; firstly, that she no longer
complained of her breath failing, and, secondly, that I fell in love with
her. Nature's cure had not yet relieved her, but she no longer needed to
be let blood. Righelini came to visit her as usual, and seeing that she
was better he prophesied that nature's remedy, without which only art
could keep her alive, would make all right before the autumn. Her mother
looked upon me as an angel sent by God to cure her daughter, who for her
part shewed me that gratitude which with women is the first step towards
love. I had made her dismiss her old dancing master, and I had taught her
to dance with extreme grace.

At the end of these ten or twelve days, just as I was going to give her
her lesson, her breath failed