Even Donna Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously, in the company of a very pretty girl.
“Oh! don’t deny it, my dear fellow,” continued Narcisse, “for she was really superb. She was walking beside you, and you turned into a lane together—the Borgo Angelico, I think.”
Dario listened smiling, quite at his ease and incapable of denying his passionate predilection for beauty. “No doubt, no doubt; it was I, I don’t deny it,” he responded. “Only the inferences you draw are not correct.” And turning towards Benedetta, who, without a thought of jealous anxiety, wore as gay a look as himself, as though delighted that he should have enjoyed that passing pleasure of the eyes, he went on: “It was the girl, you know, whom I found in tears six weeks ago. Yes, that bead-worker who was sobbing because the workshop was shut up, and who rushed along, all blushing, to conduct me to her parents when I offered her a bit of silver. Pierina her name is, as you, perhaps, remember.”
“Oh! yes, Pierina.”
“Well, since then I’ve met her in the street on four or five occasions. And, to tell the truth, she is so very beautiful that I’ve stopped and spoken to her. The other day, for instance, I walked with her as far as a manufacturer’s. But she hasn’t yet found any work, and she began to cry, and so, to console her a little, I kissed her. She was quite taken aback at it, but she seemed very well pleased.”
At this all the others began to laugh. But suddenly Celia desisted and said very gravely, “You know, Dario, she loves you; you must not be hard on her.”
Dario, no doubt, was of Celia’s opinion, for he again looked at Benedetta, but with a gay toss of the head, as if to say that, although the girl might love him, he did not love her. A bead-worker indeed, a girl of the lowest classes, pooh! She might be a Venus, but she could be nothing to him. And he himself made merry over his romantic adventure, which Narcisse sought to arrange in a kind of antique sonnet: A beautiful bead-worker falling madly in love with a young prince, as fair as sunlight, who, touched by her misfortune, hands her a silver crown; then the beautiful bead-worker, quite overcome at finding him as charitable as handsome, dreaming of him incessantly, and following him everywhere, chained to his steps by a link of flame; and finally the beautiful bead-worker, who has refused the silver crown, so entreating the handsome prince with her soft, submissive eyes, that he at last deigns to grant her the alms of his heart. This pastime greatly amused Benedetta; but Celia, with her angelic face and the air of a little girl who ought to have been ignorant of everything, remained very grave and repeated sadly, “Dario, Dario, she loves you; you must not make her suffer.”
Then the Contessina, in her turn, was moved to pity. “And those poor folks are not happy!” said she.
“Oh!” exclaimed the Prince, “it’s misery beyond belief. On the day she took me to the Quartiere dei Prati* I was quite overcome; it was awful, astonishingly awful!”
* The district of the castle meadows—see ante note.—Trans.