A slight sound caused me to turn my head. I saw little Alezia behind me; she was crossing the gallery, dragging a doll larger than herself. I loved the child, despite her haughty nature, because of her love for her mother. I tried to kiss her; but, as if she felt in the atmosphere the disgrace which had been weighing upon me in that house for two days past, she drew back with an offended air, and crouched against her father's portrait, as if she had some reason to fear me. I was instantly struck by the resemblance which her pretty little dark face bore to Torquato's haughty features, and I stopped to examine her more closely, with a feeling of profound sadness. She seemed to me to be scrutinizing me attentively at the same time. Suddenly she broke the silence to say to me in a tone of great bitterness, and with an indignant expression beyond her years:
"Why have you stolen my papa's ring?"
As she spoke, she pointed with her tiny finger at a beautiful diamond ring, mounted in the old style, which her mother had given me several days before, and which I had been childish enough to accept; then she turned and, standing on tiptoe, placed her finger on one of the fingers in the portrait which was adorned with the same ring accurately copied; and I discovered that the imprudent Bianca had presented her gondolier with one of her husband's most valuable family jewels.
The blood rose in my cheeks, as I received from that child a lesson which disgusted me more than ever with ill-gotten wealth. I smiled and handed her the ring:
"Your mamma dropped it off her finger," I said, "and I found it just now in the gondola."
"I will take it to her," said the child, snatching rather than taking it from my hand. She ran away, leaving her doll on the floor. I picked up the plaything to make sure of a little circumstance which I had often noticed before. Alezia was in the habit of running a long pin through the heart of every doll she owned, and sometimes she would sit for hours at a time, absorbed in the profound and silent pleasure of that strange amusement.
In the evening Mandola came to my room. He seemed awkward and embarrassed. He had much to say to me, but he could not find a word. His expression was so curious that I roared with laughter.
"You are doing wrong, Nello," he said with a pained look on his face; "I am your friend; you are doing wrong!"
He turned to go, but I ran after him and tried to make him explain himself; it was impossible. I saw that his heart was full of sage reflections and good advice; but he lacked words in which to express himself, and all his abortive sentences, in his patois in which all languages were mingled, ended with these words:
"E molto delica, delicatissimo."