"Do you love her?"
"I adore her, but I love the other three as well."
As I wanted to go to breakfast with Armelline I begged Margarita to keep
Mariuccia company till my return.
Mariuccia dined with me, and we spent a pleasant day together without attempting to renew our more tender relationship. We had plenty to talk about, and she told me that Costa, my old servant, had come back to Rome in a splendid coach, three years after I had left, and that he had married one of Momolo's daughters.
"He's a rascal; he robbed me."
"I guessed as much; his theft did him no good. He left his wife two years after their marriage, and no one knows what has become of him."
"How about his wife?"
"She is living miserably in Rome. Her father is dead."
I did not care to go and see the poor woman, for I could not do anything for her, and I could not have helped saying that if I caught her husband I would do my best to have him hanged. Such was indeed my intention up to the year 1785, when I found this runagate at Vienna. He was then Count Erdich's man, and when we come to that period the reader shall hear what I did.
I promised Mariuccia to come and see her in the course of Lent.