THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

silk and a hoop, and had her hair on a cushion, and I dare say a fan, of the afternoons. And you think her very well? So—so—
so!" My beloved Aurelia had tears in her eyes—one dropped and lay upon her bosom. I fell on my knees before her and would
have kissed her foot, but she sprang from me, and went quickly out of the room.
I was left alone in the greatest agitation. It was the recollection of this scene which troubled me when, returning to my lodging, I
found Virginia again in masquerade.
CHAPTER XXVI. I DISAPPOINT MY FRIENDS
My forebodings were more than fulfilled. The next time, which was at a week's interval, that I presented myself at the Villa San
Giorgio, Donna Aurelia, in full reception, turned her back upon me and left the room in company of the Marchese Semifonte. I
suffered the indignity as best I might—I did not quit the company; nobody, I flatter myself, knew what pangs of mortification I
was feeling. I saw no more of Aurelia that evening, and a conversation which I had with Donna Giulia made matters no better.
She spoke to me very plainly and with some warmth.
"Here you had, but a few days ago, your mistress in a most promising humour," she said, "detesting her doctor, yet resolved to
have him back in order to give you a countenance. In Count Giraldi and myself you have, I take leave to say, two of the most
complaisant friends in Europe; yet what are you doing? You maintain, for reasons best known to yourself, a pretty girl in your
lodgings, pranked out in silks and furbelows—a runaway from a house of discipline—and (if it is all true that they tell me) one
who, if she belongs to anybody, dare not belong, certainly, to you. Really, Don Francis, you are exorbitant. Pray, do you
propose to us to keep Aurelia here in order that she may listen to your poetry, and then to return from your intellectual feast to
the arms of your little peasant? And Aurelia is to know it and acquiesce? Good heavens! do you know that she is young, fresh,
and charming, and of Siena? I ask your pardon, Don Francis—but oh, my perverse young friend, why on earth don't you take
her?"
"Dearest lady!" I cried out, "what under Heaven am I to take? I adore Aurelia; I ask nothing better than leave to serve her, to
kneel at her feet. If she is cruel to me, that is my pride. If she is kind, that is my humiliation. If she were to kill me, that would be
my topmost reward."
"Very true indeed," she said. "And what if she were to do, as I should certainly do, ignore you altogether?"
"I should not cease to love her. I should have nothing to complain of," I said.
She tossed her hands up in despair. "If this is what conies of reading your Dante, I advise the 'Song of Solomon,'" she said. "I
have never opened the 'Divine Comedy'—still less the 'Vita Nova'; but I consider the author a donkey, and am sure that was
the opinion of his Donna Beatrice."
Count Giraldi, for some reason which I could not then comprehend, did not care to talk of my affair. He said nothing of Aurelia
to me—and, so far as I could see, avoided the lady herself as much as the discussion of her position. He told me that he had
been able to offer a judgeship of the Court of Cassation to Dr. Lanfranchi, and that he was in great hopes that he would take it.
In that case he would, of course, reside in Florence; and "The rest," said he, "I shall leave to you."
I told him that, if Donna Aurelia was reconciled to her husband through his means, I should be eternally in his debt—and not
less so though I should be in Padua and with the mountains between us.
He frowned, he was puzzled. "You leave us?" he said; "you abandon Donna Aurelia?" I told him that I could never cease to
love her, but that love for a lady seemed to me an extremely bad reason for bringing about her ruin. I had gone so near to that
already that nothing in the world would induce me to risk it again.
He affected to misunderstand me, in his scoffing way. "Admirable! Admirable!" he cried. "I see that you have recovered your
spirits."
"I hope my spirit has never failed me yet when I have had need of it," I said. "I shall thank God on my knees this night that my
lady has been saved alive. No lover in the world has ever begged for his mistress's surrender so heartily as I shall pray for the
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