"If I am a coxcomb, fair princess," I cried, "you are somewhat to blame for it, so people say."
"Very well," said she, "if you are telling the truth, if your mistress, by reason of her beauty, deserves the follies you are about to commit for her, beware of one thing, and that is that you do not find yourself in the depths of despair within a week."
"What in the deuce is the matter to-day, Signora Checchina, that you say such disagreeable things to me?"
"Let us not joke any more," she said, putting her hand on mine with a friendly gesture. "I know you better than you know yourself. You are seriously in love, and you are going to suffer—"
"Nonsense, nonsense! in your old age, Checca, you can retire to Malamocco and tell fortunes for the boatmen on the lagoons; meanwhile, my fair sorceress, allow me to go to meet my fortune without cowardly presentiments."
"No! no! I will not be quiet until I have drawn your horoscope. If it were a question of a woman who is suited to you, I should not think of vexing you; but a woman of noble birth, a society woman, a marchioness or a woman of the middle class, I don't care which it may be—I hate them all! When I see that idiot Nasi throw me aside for a creature who doesn't come up to my knees, I will stake my head, why, I say to myself that all men are vain and foolish. And so I predict that you will not be loved, because a society woman cannot love an actor; and if by any chance you are loved, you will be all the more miserable; for you will be humiliated."
"Humiliated! What do you mean by that, Checchina?"
"By what do you recognize love, Lelio? by the pleasure you give or the pleasure you receive?"
"By both, of course! What are you driving at?"
"Is it not the same with devotion as with pleasure? Must it not be mutual?"