“‘As my destiny had begun, so did it proceed. The whole of my property was given up to the Order. I had been led on, step by step, by the hope of meeting with my reward—the hand of Isabella—she who had prevailed upon me to concede every point to Giordoni, by promises of eternal love. In the hopes she had held out, consisted now my only happiness, for I had no longer a future of my own. Of the flourishing fortune which my father left me, I was permitted to claim but the share which fell to me as one of the meanest members of the “Society.”
“‘Even then I did not despair—for how could I imagine that I was to be deceived? How can I tell you all that followed—how the illusions, one by one, dropped from my vision, and left me as I am—without faith, without belief either in God or man!
“‘I had for some time observed a change in Isabella—an embarrassment for which she herself, when taxed with it by me, would account by attributing it to the perpetual disputes and _tracasseries_ which she had to endure with her father, concerning her attachment to me. The old count had long since forbidden all intercourse between us, but we had kept up an active correspondence, and obtained frequent interviews together by means of the Abbé Giordoni, and I was therefore justified in believing in her truth. Judge, then, of my despair, when told that the contessa, weary of the struggle she had to endure in her own home on my account, had resolved to retire to a convent, with the determination never to see or correspond with me until her father should consent to our union! She well knew that this condition was equivalent to a total rupture. I had given up everything for her sake, and she now deserted me!
“‘You, my friends, have both of you passed through the ordeal of passion, and can best judge of the storm of hate and rage which this conviction raised within my bosom—how in my bitterness I forswore her love, and cursed her very name! It was then that Giordoni came to my aid with his specious arguments and eloquent reasonings. He pointed out to me the utter nothingness of human love, and persuaded me to turn my energies into another channel, and, by taking priest’s orders, to seek forgetfulness of my wrongs in satisfied ambition.