"Monsieur Greuze, I love you. Tell me frankly, do you love me?"
Greuze was too happy to speak, and Lætitia, mistaking the cause of his silence, hid her face in her hands, and burst into tears.
This melted Greuze to the uttermost. He threw himself at her feet, and then, in the intervals between his impetuous kisses, he poured out impassioned declarations of his love.
"I can now be happy," cried Lætitia, clapping her hands, and behaving like a gladdened child. She ran and embraced her nurse, and again and again gave expression to her ecstasy. "Listen to me, you two; here is my scheme. I love Greuze, and I will marry him."
"My dear child, you dream," replied the nurse. "What about your father?"
"My nurse, you wish to say that my father will not consent. Well I know that. He wishes me to marry his eternal Casa—the oldest and the ugliest of men; or the young Count Palleri, whom I do not know, nor ever wish to know. I am rich through my mother, and I give my fortune to Greuze, whom I marry. He takes me to France, and you will follow us there."
And intoxicated with the future which she had arranged, she detailed, with a delicious volubility, the life that they would lead together in Paris. Greuze would continue to paint. He would become another Titian, and in the end her father would be proud to have such a son-in-law.
When Greuze next saw Lætitia he had had time to review all the circumstances, and he appeared with a woeful face. Lætitia derided him, and then tried to coax him tenderly out of his gloomy mood. At last, becoming angry, she called him perfidious, and reproached him that he had pretended to love her that he might the more easily break her heart. She cried and tore her hair, and Greuze fell at her feet, and promised to obey her blindly.
But as soon as he had left the palace he saw the folly of it all. He saw the despair of her father, heard his maledictions, and felt his vengeance, and all the misfortune which would come upon their love. He then decided that he would not relent again, nor see Lætitia any more. As an excuse for not visiting her he pretended that he was ill, and this simulated illness became real. For three months he was ailing, and part of the time he was consumed by fever and delirium.
At the end of his illness Lætitia was still eager to marry him; but with extraordinary firmness of will he resisted the temptation and fled from Italy, carrying with him secretly a copy of the portrait of Lætitia, which he had painted for her father.