an effort to restrain my ardour, and told her to tell me truly
whether she had a lover.

"Not one."

"And have you never had one?"

"Never."

"Not even a fancy for anyone?"

"No, never."

"What, with your beauty and sensibility, is there no man in Naples who
has succeeded in inspiring you with desire?"

"No one has ever tried to do so. No one has spoken to me as you have, and
that is the plain truth."

"I believe you, and I see that I must make haste to leave Naples, if I
would not be the most unhappy of men."

"What do you mean?"

"I should love you without the hope of possessing you, and thus I should
be most unhappy."

"Love me then, and stay. Try and make me love you. Only you must moderate
your ecstacies, for I cannot love a man who cannot exercise
self-restraint."

"As just now, for instance?"

"Yes. If you calm yourself I shall think you do so for my sake, and thus
love will tread close on the heels of gratitude."

This was as much as to tell me that though she did not love me yet I had
only to wait patiently, and I resolved to follow her advice. I had
reached an age which knows nothing of the impatient desires of youth.

I gave her a tender embrace, and as I was getting up to go I asked her if
she were in need of money.

This question male her blush, and she said I had better ask her aunt, who
was in the next room.

I went in, and was somewhat astonished to find the aunt seated between
two worthy Capuchins, who were talking small talk to her while she worked
at her needle. At a little distance three young girls sat sewing.

The aunt would have risen to welcome me, but I prevented her, asked her
how she did, and smilingly congratulated her on her company. She smiled
back, but the Capuchins sat as firm as two stocks, without honouring me
with as much as a glance.

I took a chair and sat down beside her.

She was near her fiftieth year, though some might have doubted whether
she would ever see it again; her manner was good and honest, and her
features bore the traces of the beauty that time had ruined.

Although I am not a prejudiced man, the presence of the two evil-smelling
monks annoyed me extremely. I thought the obstinate way in which they
stayed little less than an insult. True they were men like myself, in
spite of their goats' beards and dirty frocks, and consequently were
liable to the same desires as I; but for all that I found them wholly
intolerable. I could not shame them