"Your soul has a secret," replied Polia, "a secret that besets your friends and that certain people among those you love best may find it of use to fathom. Endowed with all the advantages that augur for a happy future: youth, ingenio, knowledge and already glory, you nonetheless abandon yourself to the languor of a mysterious sadness, you are consumed by a secret care, you neglect the works on which your reputation is based, you flee from a world that seeks you out in order to hide in almost opaque solitude days that so much success should make resplendent and, finally, if the rumours that are circulating are worthy of credence, you are on the point of breaking entirely with human society and retiring to a monastery. Is what I have just said to you true?"
Francesco seemed agitated by a thousand conflicting emotions. He needed a few moments to gather his strength. "Yes," he replied, "that is true. At least, all of it was true this morning. An event which has happened since has changed the course of my ideas without changing my resolutions. I will go to a monastery and my commitment is irrevocable, but I will go with a mind that is fully consoled and joyful, for my existence is complete and I cannot conceive of any other one so happy on earth that it would render me jealous. Born into obscurity and poverty, but stronger than my fate, I had only measured my unhappiness by the immensity of the void into which my heart had plunged. This void has been filled by the most delightful of hopes: you will remember me!"
Polia looked at him sweetly. "I want," she said, "not to see in your words a simple game of the imagination or one of those flattering condescensions of courtesy with which people think to have repaid friendship. It seems to me that this artificial language of the cold should not be applied to us. I therefore think that I begin to grasp a fraction of the things that you have said to me, with the exception of your resolve, but," she added smiling, "I do not understand them sufficiently."
"You shall understand them better," said Francesco, encouraged, "for I shall tell you everything. Forgive however the troubled nature and the lack of resolution in my words, for, of all the vicissitudes in my life, this is the most unexpected. The strange position into which I was born, without parents, without a guardian, almost without a friend, fallen from a great name and an independent fortune, would doubtless be enough to explain my natural melancholy. It's a cruel thing to say to yourself that your unhappiness started in the cradle and stayed with you the rest of your life. But that idea was the first I was able to be aware of. I had to acquit myself of the material debt of gratitude before I could think for a single moment of myself, and I do not need to tell you that I succeeded in that. From that time on my courage grew. I had few regrets for the grandeur and the opulence that had faded away forever. I went further. I congratulated myself sometimes, in my childish pride, on owing all my illustriousness to myself, and on being able one day to force the family that had rejected me to envy the celebrity of my once repudiated name. Such are the illusions of inexperience and vanity. One day was to destroy all and to recall me to misfortune and oblivion. Alas!" Francesco went on, "this is the mystery your overly benevolent curiosity has expressed the desire to know, and which reason made for me a law of keeping hidden in my breast. But how can I dare to reveal to you those sad and deep secrets of sick hearts that wisdom and philosophy regard as a puerile infirmity of the mind, and over which the elevation of your character keeps you too high for you to deign to bestow on them any other feeling apart from pity? I fell in love..."