part shewed me that gratitude which with women is the first step towards
love. I had made her dismiss her old dancing master, and I had taught her
to dance with extreme grace.

At the end of these ten or twelve days, just as I was going to give her
her lesson, her breath failed instantaneously, and she fell back into my
arms like a dead woman. I was alarmed, but her mother, who had become
accustomed to see her thus, sent for the surgeon, and her sister unlaced
her. I was enchanted with her exquisite bosom, which needed no colouring
to make it more beautiful. I covered it up, saying that the surgeon would
make a false stroke if he were to see her thus uncovered; but feeling
that I laid my hand upon her with delight, she gently repulsed me,
looking at me with a languishing gaze which made the deepest impression
on me.

The surgeon came and bled her in the arm, and almost instantaneously she
recovered full consciousness. At most only four ounces of blood were
taken from her, and her mother telling me that this was the utmost extent
to which she was blooded, I saw it was no such matter for wonder as
Righelini represented it, for being blooded twice a week she lost three
pounds of blood a month, which she would have done naturally if the
vessels had not been obstructed.

The surgeon had hardly gone out of the door when to my astonishment she
told me that if I would wait for her a moment she would come back and
begin her dancing. This she did, and danced as if there had been nothing
the matter.

Her bosom, on which two of my senses were qualified to give evidence, was
the last stroke, and made me madly in love with her. I returned to the