it sufficed me.  Inspired by her, I began the study of literature, and if at first I read disingenuously, I went on to read with profit.  The “Vita Nova” of Dante enabled me, perhaps, to touch upon topics with her which I could not have dared to do without its moving text; but it won me to the heart of the great poet.  I walked the dire circles of Hell, I scaled the Mount of Purgatory, I flew from ring to ring of the Heaven of pure light.  Aurelia was my Beatrice; but the great Florentine and his lady were necessarily of the party.  And then I began, as men will, to take the lead.  Aurelia had exhausted her little store when she had named Giotto and Dante:  I took her further afield.  We read the Commentaries of Villani, Malavolti’s History of Siena, the Triumphs of Petrarch, his Sonnets (fatal pap for young lovers), the Prince of Machiavelli, the Epics of Pulci and Bojardo, and Ariosto’s dangerously honeyed pages.  Here Aurelia was content to follow me, and I found teaching her to be as sweet in the mouth as learning of her had been.  I took enormous pains and consumed half the night in preparation for the morrow’s work.  I abridged Guicciardini’s intolerable History, I hacked sense out of Michael Angelo’s granite verses, weeded Lorenzo of disgustfulness, Politian of pedantry.  The last thing we read together was the Aminta of Tasso; the last thing I had of her was the “Little Flowers of St. Francis,” a favourite book of her devotion.  My Saint, she called St. Francis of Assisi—­as in one sense no doubt he was; but, “Aurelia,” I had replied, kissing both her hands, “you know very well who is my saint.  I should have been named Aurelius.”  She had said, “It is a good name, Aurelio.  There are many who have it in my country.”  “You shall call me nothing else, “said I then; but she shook her head, and hung it down as she whispered softly, “I like best Francesco,” and then, so low as to be hardly audible, “Checho,” the Sienese diminutive for my name of Francis.  Old Nonna came in to hound me from the room.  That night—­it was my last but one—­Aurelia came to the door with me, and let me kiss her two hands again.

I have come to the hour of my destruction—­the 16th of June, 1722.  The smouldering fires which had laboured in my breast for nine months burst into a flame which overwhelmed both Aurelia and me.  I committed an unpardonable sin, I endeavoured to repair it with an act of well-nigh incredible temerity.  What occurred on that night is, in fact, the origin of these Memoirs and their sole justification.  The dawn of that momentous day found her a loving and honoured wife; and its close left her, innocent as she was, under the worst suspicion which can fall upon a good woman.  It found me a hopeful gentleman of means and prospects; and I went out of it into the dark, a houseless wanderer, to consort with profligates, thieves and murderers.

CHAPTER IV

FATAL AVOWAL