"'I know perfectly well that they are not there,' he replied, with a hateful laugh, 'and as for the neighbors, it would do no good to call them, for I should be far away before they could get here. What makes you afraid of me, young woman? I only wanted to have a nearer view of your soft eyes and your red lips; Raphael's Madonna is a mere maid-servant compared with you. Come, don't be afraid of me'—and, as he spoke, he held the door open, which I tried to shut in his face.—'I would give my life for a kiss from you; but if you refuse me that, give me at least the rose that perfumes your breast; I shall die of joy dreaming that ——'
"I heard no more, for he had let the door go and tried to seize me in his arms. In spite of my terror, I had more presence of mind than he expected; for I stepped quickly to one side, slammed the door in his face, and as he was a little bewildered by the blow, I took advantage of it to run through Michel's room. I ran downstairs at the top of my speed, and didn't stop until I was in the street, for there was no neighbor near enough to depend upon. When I was among the people in the street, I was no longer afraid of the monk, but I wouldn't have come back to my room for anything on earth. I walked to Villa Palmarosa, and didn't feel entirely at ease until the princess had taken me into her room. I passed the rest of the day there, and did not come home until father was ready. But I dared not say anything about what had happened, for the reason I have given you—and if I must be entirely frank, because I felt that I had been imprudent to joke with that wretched begging monk, and that I deserved some blame for it. A rebuke from my father would almost kill me; but from Princess Agatha—why, I would rather be damned at once and forever!'"
"Dear child, as you are so afraid of reproaches, I will keep your secret," said Magnani, "and I will not venture to make the slightest comment."
"On the contrary, I beg you to comment as severely as you please, Magnani. It will not humiliate me from you. I am not presumptuous enough to think that you like me, and I know that my childish faults will not cause you the slightest distress. It is because I know how dearly my father and Princess Agatha love me that I dread so to grieve them. But you can say whatever you please to me, for you will simply laugh at my foolishness."
"So you think me very indifferent, do you?" said Magnani, upon whom this story of the monk had had a singularly disquieting and disturbing effect.
Then, surprised at the question that had escaped him, he rose and went on tiptoe to listen at Michel's door. He thought that he could hear the regular breathing of a sleeping person. The Piccinino had in fact succeeded finally in allaying the tumult of his thoughts, and Michel, overcome by weariness, was dozing in his chair, with his head resting on his hands.
Magnani returned to Mila; but he dared not sit beside her again. "And I too," he thought, ashamed, and as it were, afraid of himself, "I am a monk consumed by my imagination and excited by enforced continence. This child is too lovely, too pure, too trustful, to live thus the untrammelled neglected life of girls of our station; no one can look at her without emotion, whether he be a monk doomed to celibacy or a man hopelessly in love with another woman. I would like to have my hands on that vile monk and break his neck; and yet I too quiver at the thought that this unsuspecting maiden is in this room, alone with me, in the silence of night, ready to seek shelter in my arms at the slightest alarm!"
XXXI
WITCHCRAFT
Magnani tried to divert his thoughts by talking of the princess with Mila. The innocent girl lured him into it, and he accepted that subject of conversation as a preservative. It will be seen that a strange revolution had taken place in two days in the young man's mental condition, since he had already reached the point of looking upon his love for Agatha as a duty, or as what the doctors call a depurative.
If he had been certain that the princess loved Michel, of which fact he was persuaded at times, with a feeling of utter stupefaction, he would have been almost entirely cured of his own mad passion. For he had given it so exalted a place in his thoughts that, as he had lost hope, so he had almost reached the point where he desired nothing. His passion had become a sort of pious habit, so ideal that it no longer touched the earth, and that by returning it, Agatha might have destroyed it instantly. Assume that she loved any man on earth, even the man who cherished so exalted an adoration for her, and she became in his eyes simply a woman, whose influence he could combat. That was the result of five years' suffering without the slightest presumption, and without a moment's intermission. In a heart of such strength and purity, the utmost order had prevailed amid the effervescence of a passion which resembled a beginning of madness; and it was precisely that circumstance which might be Magnani's salvation. Efforts to deaden his pain would have served only to excite him more, and after indulging in vulgar pleasures, he would have returned to his chimera with more suffering and more weakness; whereas by abandoning himself without resistance, without desire for repose, and without terror, to a martyrdom which might be everlasting, he had allowed the flame to become concentrated in one spot, where it burned dully, not fanned from without, and deprived of any fresh sustenance.