‘Ti am’ ancor, ti am’ ancor.’
‘After the avowal you have made me, Marietta, it were base in me to be beguiled thus,’ said he, moving away. ‘You love another: be it so. Live in that love, and be happy.’
‘This, too, Gherardi, we used to sing together,’ said she, beginning another air. ‘Let us see if your memory, of which you boast so much, equals mine. Come, this is your verse,’ said she caressingly. ‘Ah, fratello mio, how much more lovable you were long ago! I remember a certain evening, that glided into a long night, when we leaned together, with arms around each other’s necks, out of a little window; it was a poor, melancholy street beneath, but to us it was like an alley between cedar-trees. Well, on that same night, you swore to me a vow of eternal love; you told me a miraculous story: that, though poor and friendless, you were of birth and blood; and that birth and blood meant rank and fortune in some long hereafter, for which neither of us was impatient. It was on that same night you drew a picture to my mind of our life of happiness—a bright and gorgeous picture it was too—ay, and I believed it all; and yet, and yet—on the very day after you deserted me.’ As she uttered the last words, her head fell upon his shoulder, and her long hair in waving masses dropped down over his chest and on his arm; a violent sobbing seemed to choke her utterance, and her frame shook with a strong tremor.
Gerald sank into a chair, and pressed her gently to his heart. Oh, what a wild conflict raged within him; what hopes and fears, wishes and dreads, warred there with each other! At one moment all his former love came back, and she was the same Marietta he had wandered with through the chestnut groves, reciting in boyish ardour the verses he had learned to master; at the next, a shuddering shame reminded him that she had just confessed she loved another, making a very mockery of the memory of their former passion. What, too, was she—what her life—that she did not dare to reveal it?
‘And you,’ cried she, suddenly springing up, ‘what do you know of Riquetti? How came you to be with him?’
‘I have known him long, Marietta. Would that I had never known him! Without him and his teachings I had thought better of the world—been less prone to suspect—less ready to distrust. You may remember how, long ago, I told you of a certain Gabriel——’
‘It was he, then, who befriended you in the Maremma? Oh, the noble nature that can do generous things, yet seem to think them weakness! How widely different from your poets this—your men of high sentiment and sordid action—your coiners of fine phrases, hollow-hearted and empty!’
‘True enough,’ said Gerald bitterly; ‘Gabriel de Mirabeau is at least consistent; his sentiments are all in harmony with his life—he is no hypocrite.’
It was with a quick gesture, like a tigress about to spring, that she now turned on him, her eyeballs staring wildly, and her fingers closely clutched. ‘Is it,’ cried she in passion, ‘is it given to creatures like you or me to judge of a man like this? Do you imagine that by any strain of your fancy you can conceive the trials, the doubts, the difficulties, which beset him? To intellects like his what we call excess may give that repose which to sluggish natures comes of mere apathy. I, too,’ said she, drawing herself proudly up, ‘I, too, have been his pupil; he saw me in the Cleopatra; he told me how I had misconceived the poet—or rather, how the poet had mistaken the character—for he loves not your Alfieri.’
‘How should he? Whence could he draw upon the noble fund of emotions that fill that great heart?’