"Oh! mio Dio!"
"Tell her that Juliana is sleeping," I suggested to my mother in an almost supplicating tone.
She made me a sign that the visitor was waiting in the adjoining room. We must see her.
This Signora Talice was a spiteful and fastidious gossip. Every few moments she glanced at me with curiosity. In the course of conversation, my mother happened to say that I had sat with the invalid all day almost without interruption, and Signora Talice, looking fixedly at me, said in a tone of manifest irony:
"What an ideal husband!"
She finally irritated me so that I found a pretext to leave the room.
I left the house. On the steps I met Maria and Natalia coming in with their governess. As usual they assailed me with an infinity of caresses, and Maria, the elder, handed me several letters that the janitor had given her. Among them I suddenly recognized the letter of the Absent. And then I escaped from their caresses with a sort of impatience. As soon as I was in the street I stopped to read.
It was a short letter, but full of passion, with two or three of those singularly incisive phrases that Teresa knew how to write when she wished to disturb me. She announced her return to Florence on the twentieth to the twenty-sixth of that month, and said she hoped to meet me as before. She promised to furnish me with more precise particulars concerning the rendezvous.
In a second all the phantoms of the recent illusions and emotions became detached from my mind like the flowers of a tree shaken by a gust of wind. And, as the fallen flowers are forever lost to the tree, so these things of the soul were lost to me. They became foreign to my being. I made an effort, I tried to regain possession of myself; I did not succeed. I began to walk through the streets, aimlessly; I entered the shop of a confectioner, I entered a book-shop; I bought bonbons and books, mechanically. Twilight fell; the street lamps were lighted; the pavements were crowded; two or three ladies bowed to me from their carriages; one of my friends passed quickly, laughing and talking with his mistress, who held a bunch of roses in her hand. The maleficent breath of fashionable life penetrated me, awakened my curiosity, my desires, my jealousies. My blood seemed suddenly aflame. Certain images, extraordinarily distinct, passed before my mind like a lightning flash. The Absent regained possession of me merely by certain "expressions" of her letter, and all my desires went out towards her, madly.
But when the first tumult was appeased, while I was re-ascending the steps of my house, I understood the gravity of what had taken place, of what I had done; I understood that, a few hours before, I had effectively tightened the bond, I had pledged my faith, I had given a promise, a tacit but solemn promise, to a creature still weak and ill. I could not break my word without infamy, and I was conscious of it. Then I was sorry I had not mistrusted this deceitful compassion; I was sorry I had dwelt too long on this sentimental languor! And I examined minutely my acts, my words, of that day, with the cold subtilty of a dishonest tradesman who seeks a quarrel in order to avoid the obligations of a contract he has made. My last words had been too serious. That "Could you forget?" pronounced in that tone, after the reading of those verses, had had the value of a definite understanding. And that "Silence!" of Juliana had been the seal of the contract.