I know not which.  For fifteen days of your life you have gone fasting, unwashen to bed—­ but I for fifteen years of mine; consider me that, sir.  Your experiences, again, may be ended whensoever you choose; you have but to write a letter, I suppose.  But for me”—­she touched herself on the breast—­“they have no end at all, save one—­and I have never learned to write.  My good Don Francesco,” said she lightly, “you don’t know what you are talking about.”

This gave me the courage, if not the opportunity, to assure her that I did.  I entreated, reproached, exhorted her—­to no purpose.  Driven to it at last, I alluded again to my unlucky expenditure, when she drew herself up fiercely, and striking at me venomously, had me at her discretion.

“I am perhaps in your debt for that magnificent outlay of yours, Don Francesco,” she said.  “I am willing to admit it, if only to spare you the trouble of reminding me of it any more; and if you ask me to liquidate it, I cannot refuse you.  I am at your disposition as soon as you please, and in any manner that you think proper.  But if you think I am to be bought of my father and put in a cupboard like so much cheese, and locked up with a golden key kept in some man’s pocket, you are very much mistaken.”

Here, the reader may think, it would have been proper for me to have told her that she was a worthless girl, who might go to the deuce for all I cared; but if such is his opinion, it is not, and was not, mine.  I shall not set down all the talk between us; it was beating the air on my side, and a steady trampling of solid earth on hers.  My final argument, and that only, produced a certain effect upon this remarkably clear-headed girl.  I told her that part of my story which dealt with Aurelia’s perfections and my own disastrous imperfections; I made her understand that I was not the inexperienced man she had thought me; rather, I was one with two examples ever before him—­one shining with the pure effulgence of Heaven, the other harsh, staring, horrible, like some baleful fire at sea.  “Ah, Virginia,” I concluded, “you must not misjudge me.  It is a sinner who speaks to you, not a saint removed too far to help you.  A sinner indeed am I, yet not utterly lost.  I have a guide, a hope, a haven; I have a light whereby I may steer my poor barque.  Aurelia Lanfranchi—­no! let me call her by her own name—­Aurelia Gualandi will save my soul alive.  Oh, let her example be yours—­and her excellence your means of excellence!”

Virginia, I say, was struck by these moving words of mine.  She hung her head and seemed sunk in thought.