will visit Donna Cecilia only now and then." Feeling most unhappy, I took
his hand to press it against my lips, but he folded me in his arms as a
father might have done, and turned himself round so as not to let me see
that he was weeping.

I dined at the cardinal's palace and sat near the Abbe Gama; the table
was laid for twelve persons, who all wore the costume of priests, for in
Rome everyone is a priest or wishes to be thought a priest and as there
is no law to forbid anyone to dress like an ecclesiastic that dress is
adopted by all those who wish to be respected (noblemen excepted) even if
they are not in the ecclesiastical profession.

I felt very miserable, and did not utter a word during the dinner; my
silence was construed into a proof of my sagacity. As we rose from the
table, the Abbe Gama invited me to spend the day with him, but I declined
under pretence of letters to be written, and I truly did so for seven
hours. I wrote to Don Lelio, to Don Antonio, to my young friend Paul, and
to the worthy Bishop of Martorano, who answered that he heartily wished
himself in my place.

Deeply enamoured of Lucrezia and happy in my love, to give her up
appeared to me a shameful action. In order to insure the happiness of my
future life, I was beginning to be the executioner of my present
felicity, and the tormentor of my heart. I revolted against such a
necessity which I judged fictitious, and which I could not admit unless I
stood guilty of vileness before the tribunal of my own reason. I thought
that Father Georgi, if he wished to forbid my visiting that family, ought
not to have said that it was worthy of respect; my sorrow would not have
been so intense. The day and the whole of the night were spent in painful
thoughts.