But my reckoning was wrong; Cordiani had conceived a scheme, and I could not help listening to all he had to say about it.

His whining and exaggerated complaints had no end.

He upbraided me for refusing to further the plan he had concocted, and which he thought I would accept with rapture if I loved him.

The scheme was for me to elope with him during holy week, and to run away to Ferrara, where he had an uncle who would have given us a kind welcome, and would soon have brought his father to forgive him and to insure our happiness for life.

The objections I made, his answers, the details to be entered into, the explanations and the ways and means to be examined to obviate the difficulties of the project, took up the whole night.