We had been friends for three weeks when I took the liberty of asking him how he reconciled his theories with his attachment to Brigida Sabatini.
He supped with her every evening, and she breakfasted with him every morning. When I went to see him, she was either there already or came in before my call was over. She breathed forth love in every glance, while the abbé was kind, but, in spite of his politeness, evidently bored.
Brigida looked well enough, but she was at least ten years older than the abbé. She was very polite to me and did her best to convince me that the abbé was happy in the possession of her heart, and that they both enjoyed the delights of mutual love.
But when I asked him over a bottle of good wine about his affection for Brigida, he sighed, smiled, blushed, looked down, and finally confessed that this connection was the misfortune of his life.
“Misfortune? Does she make you sigh in vain? If so you should leave her, and thus regain your happiness.”
“How can I sigh? I am not in love with her. She is in love with me, and tries to make me her slave.”
“How do you mean?”
“She wants me to marry her, and I promised to do so, partly from weakness, and partly from pity; and now she is in a hurry.”
“I daresay; all these elderly girls are in a hurry.”
“Every evening she treats me to tears, supplications, and despair. She summons me to keep my promise, and accuses me of deceiving her, so you may imagine that my situation is an unhappy one.”