“And FROM whom she is a fugitive now.”
“Indeed—what!—I understand. Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky fellow, cher confrere.”
“Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue, thou seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!”
Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, “Experience is a great undeceiver. Humph! What service can I do thee with regard to the Italian?”
“I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and pitfalls. I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard. In your blessed Republic, a good and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife, has but to say, ‘Be mine, or I denounce you!’ In a word, Viola must share our flight.”
“What so easy? I see your passports provide for her.”
“What so easy? What so difficult? This Fillide—would that I had never seen her!—would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses! The love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with a heaven, to merge in a hell! She is jealous as all the Furies; she will not hear of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!—I tremble to think of it. She is capable of any excess in the storm of her passions.”
“Aha, I know what such women are! My wife, Beatrice Sacchini, whom I took from Naples, when I failed with this very Viola, divorced me when my money failed, and, as the mistress of a judge, passes me in her carriage while I crawl through the streets. Plague on her!—but patience, patience! such is the lot of virtue. Would I were Robespierre for a day!”
“Cease these tirades!” exclaimed Glyndon, impatiently; “and to the point. What would you advise?”
“Leave your Fillide behind.”