"Checho," she said, "this is foolish, and I must not listen. I beg you to get up; I know it is late. Please to ask Nonna what's o'clock. I am serious."
"And I," I said, "am serious. The time is full--the time is now. Oh, Aurelia," I said urgently, "my saint and my lamp--"
"Hush, hush," she said, and tried to regain her hand. "No, but you must be quiet. Listen!" But I could not now be stopped.
"Oh," I cried out, "I have been silent too long, and now I must speak. For six months I have been silent; but now there is death in silence. I shall die of love, and it will be you that will have killed me." I knelt again, and again said, "I love you."
"Oh, no, no," she said, but her protest was fainter. I repeated it, and now she made no protest. God help me, I thought her won. I flung myself violently near, and in my agitation knocked over my chair. As that fell backwards, so fell I forwards to her knees. I clasped them closely, studded kisses on her hands, I raised my face to hers, and saw her the lovelier for her pale terror. She was speechless.
"Listen to me, Aurelia, youngest of the angels," I began, and just then old Nonna burst in upon me crying "Ruin!" I sprang to my feet, and Aurelia away, her work table went down, the lamp with it; we were all three in darkness.
"Ruin!" said Nonna, "I tell you, ruin! That wretched boy--the padron is on the stair."
Aurelia shrieked that she was undone; Nonna, who had flown back into the kitchen, returned with a lamp. I saw my beautiful mistress distraught and ran forward to comfort her. She shrank from me with horror, as well she might. "Farewell, lady," I said, "I will go to meet what I deserve."
I took my cloak, hat and sword, and went to the door, but Nonna caught me by the skirt, and, "Is he mad then?" she cried; and, "What are you about, Don Francis? Will you meet the padron on the stair and let him up to see this wreckage? Madonna purissima, what is one to do with a boy of this sort?"
"Let me go," said I, "to my proper fate. I know very well what I have done." It may be that I did, and I hope that I did; but very certainly I did not know what to do next; nor did Aurelia. Sobbing and trembling she lay upon Nonna's breast, imploring her to save us both. I heard the professor clear his throat upon the floor below, and knew that I was too late. Nonna took the command.
She flung open the door of the clothes-press, and, "In with you," says she to me. "Little fool! a pretty state of things!" She turned to her mistress, "Mistress, go you down and meet him. Keep him at the door-- hold him in talk--hug, kiss, throttle, what you will or what you can, while I set this to rights." Aurelia, drying her eyes, flew to the door; and Nonna then, taking me by the shoulders, fairly stuffed me into the clothes-press, among Aurelia's gowns, which hung there demurely in bags. "Keep you quiet in there, foolish, wicked young man," said she, "and when they've gone to bed maybe I'll let you out. If I do, let me tell you, it will be because you have done so much folly and wickedness as no one in his senses could have dared. That shows me that you are mad, and one must pity, not blame, the afflicted."
All this time she was working like a woolcarder at the disordered room, but could not refrain her tongue from caustic comments upon my behaviour. "Wicked, wicked Don Francis! Nay, complete and perfect fool rather, who, because a lady is kind to you, believes her to be dying for your love. Your love indeed! What is your precious love worth beside the doctor's? Have you a position the greatest in the university? Have you years, gravity, authority, money in the funds? Why, are you breeched yet? Have you tired of sugar-sticks? What next?" So she went on grumbling and scolding until the doctor came grunting to the open door with Aurelia upon his arm.
He was, as usual, out of breath and angry. He was also, I judged, embarrassed and fretted by the ministrations of Aurelia.
"My curse," I heard him say, "my undying curse upon the man who built this house. Twice a day am I to scale a mountain? Wife, wife, you strangle me!"
"Oh, dear friend! Oh, dear friend!" 'Twas the voice of Aurelia. "Are you come back to your poor girl?"
"Hey," cried he testily, "do I seem to be absent? I wish you would talk sense. These infernal stairs rob us all of our wits, it seems."
"I am very foolish," said Aurelia, and I heard her trouble in her tones. "I have been waiting so long--so very long."
"There, my child, there," said he, and kissed her. "Now be pleased to let me into my house." With a sigh, which I heard, she released him, and he came stamping into the room. I trembled in my shameful retreat.
The reflections of a young man of sensibility, ear-witness against his will of the chaste and sanctioned familiarities of a man and wife, must always be mingled of sweet and bitter; but when to the natural force of these is added horror of a crime and the shame arising from discovery of utter delusion, the reader may imagine the stormy sea of torment in which I laboured. In a word, I was to discover a new Aurelia--Aurelia the affectionate wife, the careful minister; not the adored mistress of a feverish boy, the heroine of a Vita Nuova, the Beatrice of a, I fear me, profane comedy, the beloved of Aminta and the Pastor Fido. I own that I was dismayed, wounded in my tenderest part, at the discovery. Aurelia had suddenly become a stranger to my heart. I was nothing, less than nothing, to her now that she was alone with her husband. Beside the care of his appetite for food, my labours upon Guicciardini--the toil of a month of nights--was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic discovery! How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine. I do not feel equal to the task of relating all that I overheard; if I could have stopped my ears, I would have done it. She tempted him, beguiled him to eat, to praise her, to be at ease, to love her. With that liquid tongue of hers, which would have melted a flinty core, she talked of his and her affairs; she was interested in his commentary upon the Pandects, she was indignant at the jealousy of Dr. This, she made light of the malice of Professor That. With flying feet from table to kitchen and back, with dexterous hands at bottle, platter or napkin, she ministered to his slightest whims. She refused to allow Nonna to wait upon him; she must do everything for him for this once.
And when, amid his flung ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his "Non c'e male," his "Buono, buono!" his "Ancora un po'," or "Dammi da here," he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice I heard her reply, "It is because--it is because--I have not always been good to you, Porfirio. It is because--of late--this evening--I have much wished for you to be here. It is because---"
"Cospetto!" I heard the doctor cry, "what is the meaning of this? Come here, my dear." And then, when she went to him and sat upon his knee, I heard him murmur his endearments--ah, and I heard her soft and broken replies! And I knew very well that in her heart she was reproaching herself for what I alone had done, and by her humble appeal for kindness was craving his forgiveness for offences for which I could never hope to be forgiven.
These terrible discoveries, far from making me cease to love Aurelia, increased incalculably while they changed and purged my love. Pity and terror, says Aristotle in his Poetics, are the soul's cathartics. Both of these I felt, and emerged the cleaner. By the tune Aurelia had coaxed her husband to come to bed, and had gone thither, with a kiss, herself, I was half way to a great resolve, which, though it resulted in untold misery of body, was actually, as I verily believe, the means of my soul's salvation. Without ceasing for a moment to love Aurelia, I now loved her honestly again. I could see her a wife, I could know her a loving wife, without one unworthy thought; I could gain glory from what was her glory, I could be enthusiastic upon those virtues in her which to a selfish lover would have been the destruction of his hopes. In a word, I loved her now because she loved another.
There is nothing