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everything down which may come into our heads. You will tell me
your seraphic visions and revelations, and I will treat you with my
profane adventures; you again will run into ecstasies upon the
dignity of man, yea, and of woman; I into an ingenuous narrative of
my various profanations; I hoping to make a convert of you, and you
of me.

"Give me an answer should you approve these conditions."

I replied, "Yours is not a compact, but a jest. I was full of good-
will towards you. My conscience does not constrain me to do more
than to wish you every happiness both as regards this and another
life."

Thus ended my secret connexion with that strange man. But who
knows; he was perhaps more exasperated by ill fortune, delirium, or
despair, than really bad at heart.



CHAPTER XLII.



I once more learnt to value solitude, and my days tracked each other
without any distinction or mark of change.

The summer was over; it was towards the close of September, and the
heat grew less oppressive; October came. I congratulated myself now
on occupying a chamber well adapted for winter. One morning,
however, the jailer made his appearance, with an order to change my
prison.

"And where am I to go?"

"Only a few steps, into a fresher chamber."

"But why not think of it when I was dying of suffocation; when the
air was filled with gnats, and my bed with bugs?"

"The order did not come before."

"Patience! let us be gone!"

Notwithstanding I had suffered so greatly in this prison, it gave me
pain to leave it; not simply because it would have been best for the
winter season, but for many other reasons. There I had the ants to
attract my attention, which I had fed and looked upon, I may almost
say, with paternal care. Within the last few days, however, my
friend the spider, and my great ally in my war with the gnats, had,
for some reason or other, chosen to emigrate; at least he did not
come as usual. "Yet perhaps," said I, "he may remember me, and come
back, but he will find my prison empty, or occupied by some other
guest--no friend perhaps to spiders--and thus meet with an awkward
reception. His fine woven house, and his gnat-feasts will all be
put an end to."

Again, my gloomy abode had been embellished by the presence of
Angiola, so good, so gentle and compassionate. There she used to
sit, and try every means she could devise to amuse me, even dropping
crumbs of bread for my little visitors, the ants; and there I heard
her sobs, and saw the tears fall thick and fast, as she spoke of her
cruel lover.

The place I was removed to was under the leaden prisons, (I Piombi)
open to the north and west, with two windows, one on each side; an
abode exposed to perpetual cold and even icy chill during the
severest months. The window to the west was the largest, that to
the north was high and narrow, and situated above my bed.

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