“You go with me to ignominious disgrace, to a prison’s walls; oh no, that cannot be: and yet you cannot stay here. This house will pass into other hands; I know not what to do with you, where to send you. I must return to Naples, but I do not wish you there, amid the general contempt, the disagreeable publicity that will attend me; no, you will be far better off away; I want you to go to Baie; you can remain there until the issue of affairs is known; then, if favorable, you can come to me.”
“I will obey you; I will go there if you wish it; but tell me one thing, Rinaldo, I entreat you; are not those singular men who used to visit you, the cause of this?”
“Yes,” said he, hesitatingly, “they are.”
“I knew it. I felt they came for no good purpose.”
“Gentlemen,” said my husband, addressing the king’s officers, “will you allow me a private conversation with my wife before I go?”
“Certainly, monsieur,” replied the principal of the officers; and with their officials they filed slowly from the apartment. The count, who had not spoken during our dialogue, following them with a dejected air. When the great door of the banqueting hall shut heavily behind them, Rinaldo, as if overcome by this sudden, unlooked for misfortune, threw his arms around me, and, weeping, kissed me.
“Genevra, my poor Genevra, we are about to separate, and it may be you will never see your unhappy husband again! I have not been to you the kind husband I should have been; my conduct has often been harsh and cruel: my love for you has been an enigma to myself. I have not acted rightly towards you; and now, a strange fatality—as unlooked for as strange—is about to tear me from you and that dear child.”
Sighing, he kissed me again.
“Let the past be forgotten and forgiven,” I answered, as I folded my arms around his neck: “let it go; it is done; it is nothing; I have forgotten it: only let me accompany you now. Why should sorrow separate a wife from a husband? I can share imprisonment with you, and take Raphael with me: I fear not its isolation, nor its gloom.”
“No, no; do as I wish. What could be more brutal than to enclose in prison walls a young woman and her child—shut out from God’s air and human society! Go to Baie; you will not be far from me; you shall hear from me often. Perhaps this unfortunate affair will be happily ended: then, reunited, we will seek some new home—since this will no longer acknowledge me as master; some sweet, quiet place, where our days shall be spent more happily than the best part of our married life has been.”