The Marchesa del Dongo, he added, was then at the height of her beauty: you have known with its beautiful eyes and an angelic sweetness and her pretty blonde hair that drew so dark the oval of that charming face. I was in my room a Herodias by Leonardo da Vinci, who seemed to her portrait. God willed that I was so overcome this unearthly beauty that I forgot my suit. For two years I could see that things ugly and miserable in the mountains of the country of Genoa: I ventured to say a few words about my Rapture.

“But I had too much sense to dwell long in the kind compliments. While turning my sentences, I saw, in a dining room full of marble, twelve footmen and valets dressed with what seemed to me then the height of magnificence. Imagine that those rascals had not only good shoes, but silver buckles. I saw the corner of my eye all those stupid eyes fixed on my coat, and perhaps also on my shoes, which pierced my heart. I could have a word to scare all these people, but how to replace them without the risk of frightening the ladies? for the Marquise to give a little courage, as she told me a hundred times since, sent to the convent, where she was resident in that time, Gina del Dongo, sister of her husband, afterwards Countess of this charming Pietranera person in prosperity not surpassed by the gaiety and amiable, as no one surpassed by the courage and soul in the severity of adverse fortune.