past youth, sacrificed, if not wasted; you then bitterly discerned the
blunder of nature that had given you a father when you looked for a
husband. You asked yourself whether you had not gone beyond the duty
of a wife in keeping yourself wholly for a man who was bound up in his
science. Marianna, leave your hand in mine; all I have said is true.
And you looked about you--but now you were in Paris, not in Italy,
where men know how to love----"

"Oh! Let me finish the tale," cried Marianna. "I would rather say
things myself. I will be honest; I feel that I am speaking to my
truest friend. Yes, I was in Paris when all you have expressed so
clearly took place in my mind; but when I saw you I was saved, for I
had never met with the love I had dreamed of from my childhood. My
poor dress and my dwelling-place had hidden me from the eyes of men of
your class. A few young men, whose position did not allow of their
insulting me, were all the more intolerable for the levity with which
they treated me. Some made game of my husband, as if he were merely a
ridiculous old man; others basely tried to win his good graces to
betray me; one and all talked of getting me away from him, and none
understood the devotion I feel for a soul that is so far away from us
only because it is so near heaven, for that friend, that brother,
whose handmaid I will always be.

"You alone understood, did you not? the tie that binds me to him. Tell
me that you feel a sincere and disinterested regard for my Paolo--"

"I gladly accept your praises," Andrea interrupted; "but go no
further; do not compel me to contradict you. I love you, Marianna, as
we love in the beautiful country where we both were born, I love you
with all my soul and with all my strength; but before offering you