Moreover, I reasoned that my face was too well known for me ever to be taken for a robber; and, lastly, I relied to some extent on the curiosity which the great majority of people feel to obtain a near view of the features and manners of an artist of some celebrity.
So I ventured into the shady avenue, walking rapidly, and was just about to overtake the solitary promenader, when I saw coming toward her a young man dressed in the latest fashion, and with a pretty, insipid face, who caught sight of me before I had time to jump in among the trees. I was within three yards of the noble pair. The young man stopped beside the lady, offered her his arm, and said to her, glancing at me with the most surprised air of which a perfectly attired man is capable:
"My dear cousin, who is this man who is following you?"
The lady turned, and the sight of her gave me such a shock that for a moment I was in danger of a relapse. My heart gave a sharp, nervous throb as I recognized the young woman who stared at me in such a curious way from her proscenium box at the time I was taken ill at Naples. Her face flushed slightly, then lost its color. But no gesture, no exclamation betrayed either surprise or anger. She eyed me from head to foot with calm disdain, and replied with incredible audacity:
"I don't know him."
That extraordinary statement aroused my curiosity. It seemed to me that I could detect in that girl such consummate dissimulation and such a strange sort of pride that I suddenly felt irresistibly impelled to take the risk of a mad adventure. We Bohemians do not allow ourselves to be awed overmuch by the customs of society and the laws of propriety; we have no great fear of being ejected from those private theatres where society takes its turn at posing before us, and where we feel so strongly the superiority of the artist; for there no one can arouse in us the intense emotions which we have the art of arousing. Salons bore us to death and chill our blood, in return for the warmth and life that we carry thither. So I approached my noble hosts with a dignified air, caring very little about the manner of their reception of me, and determined to take the first convenient pretext for obtaining admission to the house.
I bowed gravely and represented myself as a piano-tuner who had been sent for to Florence from a country-house, the name of which I pretended to remember imperfectly.
"This is not the place. You may quit this place," replied the signora, coldly. But, like a true fiancé, the cousin came to my assistance.
"My dear cousin," he said, "your piano is terribly out of tune; if this man could spare an hour, we might have some music this evening. I beg you to let him tune it, won't you?"
The young Grimani had a wicked smile on her lips as she replied: