The breeze began really to cast white blossoms on our heads.


I woke and saw the naked walls of my room.

I had had typhus,—and a very bad typhus; I had lain two weeks unconscious in fever.

But even a fever is sometimes the mercy of God.

When I regained consciousness I learned that Panna Antonina's parents had taken her to Venice.

But I, lonely as before, finish my confession, which is strange, perhaps. I was so immensely happy in my visions that I wrote them down at once, so that life's irony might not be lost. I conclude the above reminiscences without sorrow, and with my former faith, that among all sources of happiness, that from which I drank during the fever is the clearest and best.

A life which love has not visited, even in a dream, is worse than mine.