Seine. Here he sat down on a stone, and I, sitting opposite to him,
saw the old man's hair gleaming like threads of silver in the
moonlight. The stillness was scarcely troubled by the sound of the
far-off thunder of traffic along the boulevards; the clear night air
and everything about us combined to make a strangely unreal scene.

"You talk of millions to a young man," I began, "and do you think that
he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are
you not laughing at me?"

"May I die unshriven," he cried vehemently, "if all that I am about to
tell you is not true. I was one-and-twenty years old, like you at this
moment. I was rich, I was handsome, and a noble by birth. I began with
the first madness of all--with Love. I loved as no one can love
nowadays. I have hidden myself in a chest, at the risk of a dagger
thrust, for nothing more than the promise of a kiss. To die for Her
--it seemed to me to be a whole life in itself. In 1760 I fell in love
with a lady of the Vendramin family; she was eighteen years old, and
married to a Sagredo, one of the richest senators, a man of thirty,
madly in love with his wife. My mistress and I were guiltless as
cherubs when the _sposo_ caught us together talking of love. He was
armed, I was not, but he missed me; I sprang upon him and killed him
with my two hands, wringing his neck as if he had been a chicken. I
wanted Bianca to fly with me; but she would not. That is the way with
women! So I went alone. I was condemned to death, and my property was
confiscated and made over to my next-of-kin; but I had carried off my
diamonds, five of Titian's pictures taken down from their frames and
rolled up, and all my gold.

"I went to Milan, no one molested me, my affair in nowise interested