“Do you feel like me, Gidsa,” asked the countess, “an incomprehensible feeling of pleasure? A kind of heavenly sensation flows through my veins: I must have drank a charmed philter; help me to rise, and lead me to the mirror.”
Gidsa supported the countess and led her towards the mantelpiece; when she reached it, she rested both elbows upon it, placed her head in her hands, and looked at her beautiful face in the glass.
“Now, let everything be taken away, then undress me, and leave me alone.”
The attendant obeyed her mistress; the servants of the countess cleared the table, and when they had left, Gidsa performed the second part of her mistress’s orders, who still remained before the glass, merely raising her arms languidly one after the other, to make it just possible for her maid to perform the necessary duties, which were in a short time accomplished—the countess still remaining in the species of ecstacy into which she was plunged; then, as her mistress had directed her, she went out and left her alone.
The countess completed the remainder of her toilet in a state resembling somnambulism; she retired to rest, and remained for an instant leaning on her elbow, with her eyes fixed on the door; then by degrees, and notwithstanding all her efforts to keep awake, her eyelids became heavy, her eyes closed, and she sank upon her pillow, heaving a long deep sigh, and murmuring Rodolpho’s name.
The next morning, when she awoke, Gemma stretched out her hand as if she expected to find some one by her side; but she was alone, and for a few minutes her eyes wandered round the chamber, and then turned and fixed themselves on the table by the bedside. An open letter lay upon it, she took it up and read:—
“Madame la Comtesse,—I could have taken the vengeance of
a brigand upon you; I preferred to indulge myself in the
pleasure of a prince! but that, when you awake, you may not
imagine you have been in a dream, I have left you a proof of
the reality; look in your mirror.
“Pascal Bruno.”
Gemma’s whole frame shuddered, and a cold perspiration covered her forehead; she stretched out her arm towards the bell-rope that she might call for assistance, but womanly instinct arrested her arm, and collecting all her strength, she sprang out of bed, ran to the glass, and uttered a cry of horror. Her hair and eyebrows were completely shorn!
She hastily dressed herself, and enveloping her head in her veil, threw herself into her carriage, and ordered it to be driven back to Palermo.
The instant she arrived there, she wrote to Prince Carini, telling him that her confessor, as an expiation for her sins, had ordered her to shave off her eyebrows and hair, and retire for twelve months to a convent.