OCT. Some time afterwards Leandre met with a young gipsy girl, with
whom he fell in love.

SCA. I know that too.

OCT. As we are great friends, he told me at once of his love, and
took me to see this young girl, whom I thought good-looking, it is
true, but not so beautiful as he would have had me believe. He never
spoke of anything but her; at every opportunity he exaggerated her
grace and her beauty, extolled her intelligence, spoke to me with
transport of the charms of her conversation, and related to me her
most insignificant saying, which he always wanted me to think the
cleverest thing in the world. He often found fault with me for not
thinking as highly as he imagined I ought to do of the things he
related to me, and blamed me again and again for being so insensible
to the power of love.

SCA. I do not see what you are aiming at in all this.

OCT. One day, as I was going with him to the people who have charge
of the girl with whom he is in love, we heard in a small house on a
by-street, lamentations mixed with a good deal of sobbing. We
inquired what it was, and were told by a woman that we might see
there a most piteous sight, in the persons of two strangers, and that
unless we were quite insensible to pity, we should be sure to be
touched with it.

SCA. Where will this lead to?