“Hush, my bird,” he panted softly; “there is one other way—if it must be so indeed.”
There followed a pause. I could have laughed in the mad joy of my revenge. He was an upstart, this patriot; a son of the people. He would commit her to his own—wive her, I most fervently prayed—and deposit his jewel, this little pet of luxury, in the squalid cabin at Camaldoli where he was born. He had often told me of it; of his early experiences of the joys of life in a place where the peasant could not fasten his coat against cold, or take refuge from the sun under a tree, or borrow a stone from the hill for his paths, or renew his starved patch with manure of leaves, or set a water-butt to catch the showers, or be buried decently when he dropped at the plough-tail and died, because buttons, and the shade of trees, and stones, and dead leaves, and rain-water, and a dead peasant were all taxed alike—items in a hundred other feudal impositions which left existence hardly its own shadow to prevail by. And now these joys would be hers; for I knew that she had not the strength to oppose him, though enough to damn her own fool fortune by insisting on the Church’s sanction to her possession of an estate of mud and wattles. I listened eagerly for the next.
“If thou wilt be my mother’s daughter?” he said.
I could have clapped my hands. I hurried down the passage and out into the night, fierce, burning, but with an exultation in my rage. The sight of men risen, scared and listening, as I passed through the wineshop, served to recall me to myself and to my danger. I was outcast from these conspirators—if only they had known!
With an effort I composed myself, and turned to them with a smile—
“Messieurs, but the door is between me and the street!”
One of them at that stepped forward, opened it, and gravely bowed me forth. As gravely I stepped into the rain, and made without hurry for the beach.
So this was the end to all my exaltation, to my dreams of love and sacrifice! I stamped in the puddles. “Vive la tyrannie! vive les Bourbons!” I cried to myself as I sped on. So shamed, so wronged, so spurned! was not the worst justified to me? I saw the shadow of my loved monster standing solemn sentinel over the single trunk we had brought with us. Our heavy baggage we had left in Rome. O, mon fidèle! how at that moment I could have stormed my wounded heart out on thy breast!
“Canst thou lift it and follow me?” I said only.
He answered, the dear Caliban, by obeying.