I wanted to see the twistings and turnings Conti would perform.  My dear child, I saw in one week actual horrors of sham sentiment, infamous buffooneries of feeling.  I will not tell you about them; you shall see the man here in a day or two.  He now knows that I know him, and he hates me accordingly.  If he could stab me with safety to himself I shouldn’t be alive two seconds.  I have never said one word of all this to Beatrix.  The last and constant insult Geranno offers me is to suppose that I am capable of communicating my sad knowledge of him to her; but he has no belief in the good feeling of any human being.  Even now he is playing a part with me; he is posing as a man who is wretched at having left me.  You will find what I may call the most penetrating cordiality about him; he is winning; he is chivalrous.  To him, all women are madonnas.  One must live with him long before we get behind the veil of this false chivalry and learn the invisible signs of his humbug.  His tone of conviction about himself might almost deceive the Deity.  You will be entrapped, my dear child, by his catlike manners, and you will never believe in the profound and rapid arithmetic of his inmost thought.  But enough; let us leave him.  I pushed indifference so far as to receive them together in my house.  This circumstance kept that most perspicacious of all societies, the great world of Paris, ignorant of the affair.  Though intoxicated with pride, Gennaro was compelled to dissimulate; and he did it admirably.  But violent passions will have their freedom at any cost.  Before the end of the year, Beatrix whispered in my ear one evening:  ‘My dear Felicite, I start to-morrow for Italy with Conti.’  I was not surprised; she regarded herself as united for life to Gennaro, and she suffered from the restraints imposed upon her; she escaped one evil by rushing into a greater.  Conti was wild with happiness,—­the happiness of vanity alone.  ‘That’s what it is to love truly,’ he said to me.  ’How many women are there who would sacrifice their lives, their fortune, their reputation?’—­’Yes, she loves you,’ I replied, ‘but you do not love her.’  He was furious, and made me a scene; he stormed, he declaimed, he depicted his love, declaring that he had never supposed it possible to love as much.  I remained impassible, and lent him money for his journey, which, being unexpected, found him unprepared.  Beatrix left a letter for her husband and started the next day for Italy.  There she has remained two years; she has written to me several times, and her letters are enchanting.  The poor child attaches herself to me as the only woman who will comprehend her.  She says she adores me.  Want of money has compelled Gennaro to accept an offer to write a French opera; he does not find in Italy the pecuniary gains which composers obtain in Paris.  Here’s the letter I received yesterday from Beatrix.  Take it and read it; you can now understand it,—­that is, if it is possible, at your age, to analyze the things of the heart.”