he would be to sign them. All I
wanted was clearness, so difficult to obtain in poetry, while a little
doubtful darkness would have been accounted sublime by my new Midas. But,
although I wanted to please him, the cardinal was only a secondary
consideration, and the handsome marchioness the principal object.

As the marchioness in her verses had made a pompous enumeration of every
physical and moral quality of his eminence, it was of course natural that
he should return the compliment, and here my task was easy. At last
having mastered my subject well, I began my work, and giving full career
to my imagination and to my feelings I composed the ten stanzas, and gave
the finishing stroke with these two beautiful lines from Ariosto:

Le angelicche bellezze nate al cielo
Non si ponno celar sotto alcum velo.

Rather pleased with my production, I presented it the next day to the
cardinal, modestly saying that I doubted whether he would accept the
authorship of so ordinary a composition. He read the stanzas twice over
without taste or expression, and said at last that they were indeed not
much, but exactly what he wanted. He thanked me particularly for the two
lines from Ariosto, saying that they would assist in throwing the
authorship upon himself, as they would prove to the lady for whom they
were intended that he had not been able to write them without borrowing.
And, as to offer me some consolation, he told me that, in recopying the
lines, he would take care to make a few mistakes in the rhythm to
complete the illusion.

We dined earlier than the day before, and I withdrew immediately after
dinner so as to give him leisure to make a copy of the stanzas before the
arrival of the lady.

The next evening I met the marchioness at the entrance of the palace, and
offered her my arm to come out of her carriage. The instant she alighted,
she said to me,

"If ever your stanzas and mine become known in Rome, you may be sure of
my enmity."

"Madam, I do not understand what you mean."

"I expected you to answer me in this manner," replied the marchioness,
"but recollect what I have said."

I left her at the door of the reception-room, and thinking that she was
really angry with me, I went away in despair. "My stanzas," I said to
myself, "are too fiery; they compromise her dignity, and her pride is
offended at my knowing the secret of her intrigue with Cardinal S. C.
Yet, I feel certain that the dread she expresses