Describe Violante brooding over her Italian Poets, and filled with dreams
of her fatherland; describe her with all the flashes of her princely
nature, shining forth through humble circumstance and obscure position;
waken in your listener compassion, respect, admiration for her kindred
exiles,--and I think our work is done. She will recognize evidently
those whom her brother seeks. She will question you closely where you
met with them, where they now are. Protect that secret; say at once that
it is not your own. Against your descriptions and the feelings they
excite, she will not be guarded as against mine. And there are other
reasons why your influence over this woman of mixed nature may be more
direct and effectual than my own."

"Nay, I cannot conceive that."

"Believe it, without asking me to explain," answered Harley.

For he did not judge it necessary to say to Leonard: "I am high-born and
wealthy, you a peasant's son, and living by your exertions. This woman
is ambitious and distressed. She might have projects on me that would
counteract mine on her. You she would but listen to, and receive,
through the sentiments of good or of poetical that are in her; you she
would have no interest to subjugate, no motive to ensnare."

"And now," said Harley, turning the subject, "I have another object in
view. This foolish sage friend of ours, in his bewilderment and fears,
has sought to save Violante from one rogue by promising her hand to a man
who, unless my instincts deceive me, I suspect much disposed to be
another. Sacrifice such exuberance of life and spirit to that bloodless
heart, to that cold and earthward intellect! By Heaven, it shall not
be!"