"What a number of monasteries! How many convents! It must be a strange place. Shall we go to Orvieto?"
George experienced a sensation as if his soul had been overwhelmed by a sudden wave of freshness. He abandoned himself with gratitude to this comforting sign. And, as he pressed his lips to Hippolyte's brow, he gathered there the souvenir of the city of the Guelphs, of the deserted city which is silent in mute adoration of its marvellous Duomo.
"Orvieto! were you never there? Imagine to yourself, at the top of a rock of tufa, overlooking a melancholy valley, a city so perfectly silent as to seem without inhabitants; shutters closed; gray lanes in which the grass grows; a capuchin monk crossing a public square; a bishop descending from a black carriage in front of some hospital, with a decrepit domestic at the carriage-door; a tower against a white and rainy sky; a clock slowly tolling the hours; and all at once, at the bottom of a street, a miracle—the Duomo."
"What peace!" murmured Hippolyte, rather dreamily, as if she had before her eyes the vision of this silent city.
"I have seen Orvieto in February," he went on, "when the weather was like to-day, uncertain—a few drops of rain; a few beams of sunshine. I stayed there one day, and I was sorry to leave. I brought away with me a feeling of nostalgia for that peace. Oh! what peace! I had no other companion than myself, and I indulged in this dream: 'To have a mistress, or, to express it better, a sister-lover, who would be full of devotion; and to come here, to live here for a month, a long April month, a rather rainy April, ashen but mild, with showers of sunshine; to pass hours and hours in, or before, or about the cathedral; to gather roses in the convents' gardens; to visit the houses of the sisters to get preserves; to drink delicious perfumed liqueurs from small Etruscan cups; to love a great deal, and sleep a great deal in a soft bed all veiled in virginal white.'"
This dream made Hippolyte smile with happiness. Putting on an innocent expression, she said: "I am pious, you know. Will you take me to Orvieto?"
And huddling at her lover's feet, she took both his hands in hers. An immense joy invaded her whole being; she had already a foretaste of the promised repose, idleness, melancholy.
"Tell me again."
He kissed her forehead, lingering over it with chaste emotion. Then for a long time he regarded her caressingly.
"Your forehead is so beautiful," he said, with a little thrill.