"Emilio, what letter was that which you threw into the lagoon?"

"Vendramini's. I had not read it to the end, or I should never have
gone to my palazzo, and there have met the Duke; for no doubt it told
me all about it."

Massimilla turned pale, but a caress from Emilio reassured her.

"Stay with me all day; we will go to the opera together. We will not
set out for Friuli; your presence will no doubt enable me to endure
Cataneo's," said Massimilla.

Though this would be torment to her lover's soul, he consented with
apparent joy.

If anything can give us a foretaste of what the damned will suffer on
finding themselves so unworthy of God, is it not the state of a young
man, as yet unpolluted, in the presence of a mistress he reveres,
while he still feels on his lips the taste of infidelity, and brings
into the sanctuary of the divinity he worships the tainted atmosphere
of the courtesan?

Baader, who in his lectures eliminated things divine by erotic
imagery, had no doubt observed, like some Catholic writers, the
intimate resemblance between human and heavenly love.

This distress of mind cast a hue of melancholy over the pleasure the
young Venetian felt in his mistress' presence. A woman's instinct has
amazing aptitude for harmony of feeling; it assumes the hue, it