"If I had only known sooner that I can fly," he thought.

"I will teach Marcolina." Behind the gratings, the figures of women were moving hither and thither.

They were nuns--and yet they were all wearing secular dress.
He knew it, though he could not really see them.

He knew who they were.
Henriette the Unknown; Corticelli and Cristina, the dancers; the bride; Dubois the Beautiful; the accurst vixen of Soleure; Manon Balletti; a hundred others--but never Marcolina! "You have betrayed me," he cried to the gondolier, who was waiting for him beneath.

Never had he hated anyone as he hated this gondolier, and he swore to take an exquisite revenge.
But how foolish he had been to seek Marcolina in the Murano nunnery when she had gone to visit Voltaire.