“Why do you not come? If you knew what you make me suffer—”
There was an instant during which Juliana silently bit her lip, and gazed at the letter fixedly, with greedy looks. Finally she put it back again into the pocket. She folded the gown and laid it carefully on the tête-à-tête. Then, hearing the cuckoo-clock striking, she went to call Luiza, saying in mellifluous accents,—
“It is half-past ten, Senhora.”
Luiza, still in bed, had read and re-read Bazilio’s letter. He could wait no longer, he wrote, to tell her that he adored her. He could not sleep. He had risen with the dawn to tell her that he was madly in love with her, and that he placed his life at her feet.
He had composed this letter at three o’clock in the morning, in the Gremio, after a few rubbers of whist, a beefsteak, two glasses of beer, and a glance at the “Illustração;” and he ended it by saying:—
“Let others desire fortune, fame, honors; I desire only you! Only you, dearest, because you are the only tie that attaches me to life; and if to-morrow I should lose your love, I swear to you that I would put an end to this useless existence with a bullet.”
He called for more beer, and laid the letter aside in order to date it at his hotel and put it into an envelope bearing his monogram, because that always had a better effect.
Luiza sighed, and kissed the paper devoutly! It was the first time he had employed these expressions of tenderness in writing to her, and her pride expanded in the warmth of the affection they breathed, as the pores of the body open in the warmth of an aromatic bath. She was conscious of an increase of affection on her own part, and she felt she was entering at last on a more interesting existence, in which each hour had its own peculiar charm, in which every step led to a new transport, and in which the soul was steeped in a blissful wealth of sensations.
She sprang from bed, hastily put on her dressing-gown, and raised the window-shades. What a beautiful morning! It was one of those days at the end of August in which summer seems to pause, reluctant to depart. There was a stillness in the warm air, and a certain autumnal tranquillity in the light; the sun sent down his rays in unclouded splendor, and the blue of the firmament shone with a limpid brightness; one could breathe more freely, and the passers-by did not manifest the depressing languor that had ushered in the summer. She anticipated a few hours of happiness; she felt joyous; she had slept with a peaceful sleep the whole night through, and all the agitation and the impatience of the past days seemed to have vanished during that repose. She looked at herself in the glass, and saw that her complexion was clearer, fresher, that there was a humid tenderness in her glance. Perhaps what Leopoldina had said was true,—“that there was nothing like a spice of wickedness for making one beautiful.” She had a lover! Motionless in the middle of the room, her arms folded, her gaze fixed, she repeated to herself, “I have a lover!” She recalled the scene in the parlor last night, and those periods of silence in which life seemed to pause, while the eyes in the portrait of Jorge’s mother—eyes whose blackness was enhanced by the pallor of the countenance in which they were set—gazed at her from the wall with the fixed gaze of a portrait. At this moment Juliana entered the room with a basket of freshly-ironed linen. It was time to dress.
What care she bestowed upon her toilet that morning! She perfumed herself with eau-de-Lubin; she selected the finest of her embroidered wrappers. And how she longed to be rich! She desired to possess finer linen, more elegant furniture, costly jewels, a coupé lined with satin. For in impressionable temperaments the joys of the heart have a tendency to round and complete themselves with the sensualisms of luxury. The first fault of the hitherto innocent soul prepares the way for graver transgressions, as the thief who steals into the house he designs to rob unscrupulously opens the doors to his ravenous followers.