hidden ways I know not, penetrated directly into the deepest recesses of
my heart; the which, affrighted by the sudden advent of this flame,
recalled to its center its exterior forces and left me as pale as
death, and also with the chill of death upon me. But not for long did
this continue, rather it happened contrariwise; and I felt my heart not
only glow with sudden beat, but its forces speeded back swiftly to their
places, bringing with them a throbbing warmth that chased away my pallor
and flushed my cheeks deeply; and, marveling wherefore this should
betide, I sighed heavily; nor thereafter was there other thought in my
soul than how I might please him.

In like fashion, he, without changing his place, continued to scrutinize
my features, but with the greatest caution; and, perhaps, having had
much practice in amorous warfare, and knowing by what devices the
longed-for prey might be captured, he showed himself every moment more
humble, more desperate, and more fraught with tender yearning. Alas! how
much guile did that seeming desperation hide, which, as the result has
now shown, though it may have come from the heart, never afterward
returned to the same, and made manifest later that its revealment on the
face was only a lure and a delusion! And, not to mention all his deeds,
each of which was full of most artful deception, he so wrought upon me
by his own craft, or else the fates willed it should so happen, that I
straightway found myself enmeshed in the snares of sudden and
unthought-of love, in a manner beyond all my powers of telling, and so I
remain unto this very hour.

It was this one alone, therefore, most pitiful ladies, that my heart, in
it mad infatuation, chose, not only among so many high-born, handsome
and valiant youths then present, but even among all of the same degree
having their abode in my own Parthenope, as first and last and sole lord