at first and can see thee still, can that my first vision of thee ever
be effaced? Nay, but it is scored too deeply in my heart, is too surely
my glory and my shame. Still I can see that sweet stoop of thy humility,
still thy hands crossed upon thy lovely bosom, still fall under the
spell of thy shyly welcoming eyes, and be refreshed, while I am stung,
by the gracious greeting of thy lips. "Sia il ben venuto, Signer
Francesco," saidst thou? Alas, what did I prove to thee, unhappy one,
but il mal venuto, the herald of an evil hour? What did I offer thee in
exchange for thy bounty but shame and salt tears? What could be my
portion but fruitless reproach and footsore pilgrimage from woe to woe?
But I forget myself. I am not yet to disinter these unhappy days.

It is not to be supposed from this apostrophe that when I fell at once
to love my master's wife I saw in her more than my lamp and my saint,
the gracious presence which should "imparadise," in Dante's phrase, my
mind. I was an honest lad, very serious and very simple. Perhaps I was a
fool, but I was a pure fool: and he had been a very monster of depravity
who could have cast unwholesome regard upon a welcome so generous and
modest as hers. I declare that she was never anything to me but a holy
emanation, not to be approached but on the knees, not to be looked upon
but through a veil. So from this page until near the end of my long
history she will appear to the reader. I never had an unworthy thought
of her, never an unworthy desire. I never credited her with more than
charity towards myself; and if I gloried in the fact that I was
privileged to love so wondrous a being, the thought humiliated me at the
same time. I was conscious of my nothingness before her worthiness, and
desperate to fit myself for her high society. A noble rage for
excellence possessed me; like any champion or knight of old I strove to
approve my manhood, only that I might lay the spoils of it at her sacred
feet.