CHAPTER XVII
Nothing happened during the next week; nothing, that is to say, which can be chronicled as an event. But the determination which Maria had formed after her chance meeting with Castiglione gained strength continually. She went to confession at last, and it was a bitter satisfaction to be told that she was in mortal sin because she had whispered those few loving words in the weakness of an instant; she was reminded that if the mere wish to kill was almost as bad as the intention, and that the intention was murder and nothing else, it followed that the most passing wish to be united with any man but her husband was a betrayal of her marriage vow only a little less grave than the worst. She replied that she knew it was. She was warned that she must uproot from her heart every memory of the man she had loved, if she hoped to be forgiven. She bowed her head and answered that she wished with all her soul to do so, and was trying with all her might to succeed.
She had gone once more to the terrible old Capuchin, because she knew what he would say, and wished to hear him say it. Though the name of Padre Bonaventura was known to her and to many, he did not know her and had never seen her face; it was before God that she accused herself and abased herself, and promised to do better, and most earnestly prayed for help. The monk remembered her without knowing who she was, and before he pronounced the absolution she implored, he said what he believed it his duty to say. It was a short, harsh homily on the abominable wickedness of the rich and great, who were so much better taught and so much more carefully brought up than the poor and the ignorant, and therefore so much the more responsible for their thoughts and actions. The sin of the noble lady was a thousand times greater than the fault of the unlettered hill-woman. Why should a lady of Rome expect to be forgiven more easily than a peasant?
To this also Maria bent her head, and said she came to confession as a sinful woman, with no thought of her own station in life; and at last the Capuchin was satisfied. While she was kneeling in the quiet church just afterwards, he came out of his box and went away, and she watched him, remembering how he had stalked away, in righteous indignation, with his grim old head in the air, after she had come to him the first time. But now he walked quietly and slowly, looking down; and before he disappeared he knelt before the altar a few moments. She knew that he was praying for her, as a good confessor does for each penitent, and she was humbly grateful. Even in her inmost consciousness she did not think critically of what he had said, nor find fault with his scant knowledge of great ladies’ hearts.
She did not think she had ‘risen higher’ now. Her attempt to rise by the purification of her earthly love had been a wretched failure. Henceforth she would dream no dreams of that sort: not once, in years to come, would she willingly dwell on thoughts of Baldassare del Castiglione.
It was half-past five o’clock when she reached her home again, and on the way another resolution had formed itself, on which she acted at once. She determined to tell her husband everything that had happened before he had come back. Her reason was a practical one, strong enough to warrant the risk she was about to take; for she now distrusted the man Schmidt, who might at any moment turn against her and use the knowledge he had obtained, and ruin Montalto’s life by placing her in an utterly false light. It was only natural that the steward should hate her, since she had caught him in the chapel, and before long he would try to get rid of her. Yet she was thinking less of herself now than of Montalto.
She sent for her husband’s valet, and told him to beg the Count to come to her as soon as he returned.
An hour later he entered the boudoir, looking rather pale and tired, as she thought. Her resolution wavered for a moment, but soon returned when she remembered the man who had stolen her secret, and who might so terribly misrepresent it. That thought had hindered her from burning the letters as soon as they were again in her possession, and she had put them away in her jewel-case.