When my portmanteau was locked, I ordered post-horses for the same evening, and threw myself on the bed to wait. I was so overdone by fatigue and so prostrated by despair, that I felt, as I fell asleep, something resembling the peace of the grave.
After an hour's sleep, I was aroused by Leoni's passionate kisses.
"It is of no use for you to think of going away," he said; "it is beyond my strength. I have sent away your horses and had your trunk unpacked. I have been out walking alone in the country, and I have done my utmost to force myself to give you up. I resolved not to bid you adieu. I went to the princess's and tried to persuade myself that I loved her; I hate her and I love you. You must stay."
These constant agitations weakened my mind as well as my body. I began to lose the faculty of reasoning; evil and good, esteem and contempt became vague sounds, words which I no longer cared to understand, and which frightened me as much as if they were interminable columns of figures which I was told to add. Leoni had thenceforth more than a moral influence over me; he had a magnetic power which I could not escape. His glance, his voice, his tears acted on my nerves no less than on my heart. I was simply a machine turned any way at his pleasure.
I forgave him. I abandoned myself to his caresses; I promised him whatever he chose. He told me that the Princess Zagarolo, being a widow, had thought of marrying him; that the brief and trivial fancy he had had for her had made her believe in his love; that she had foolishly compromised herself for him; and that he must either spare her pride and cut loose from her gradually, or have trouble with the whole family.
"If it were simply a matter of fighting with all her brothers, cousins and uncles," he said, "I should worry very little about it; but they will act as great noblemen, denounce me as a carbonaro, and have me thrown into prison, where I may have to wait ten years before the authorities will deign to look into my case."
I listened to all these absurd fables with the credulity of a child. Leoni had never taken any part in politics, but I was still fond of persuading myself that all that was problematical in his life was connected with some great enterprise of that kind. I consented to pass for his sister in the hotel, to go out seldom, and never with him—in short, to leave him absolutely at liberty to leave me at any moment at a nod from the princess.
[XV]
That life was perfectly frightful, but I endured it. The tortures of jealousy had been unknown to me hitherto; now they awoke, and I exhausted them all. I spared Leoni the tedium of combating them; indeed I had not enough strength left to express them. I resolved to allow myself to die in silence; I felt sick enough to hope for death. Ennui consumed me at Milan, even more than at Venice; I suffered more, and had less distraction. Leoni lived openly with the Princess Zagarolo. He passed the evening in her box at the play, or at some ball with her. He made his escape to come to see me for an instant, then returned to sup with her, and did not come back to the hotel until six o'clock in the morning. He went to bed utterly exhausted and often in ill-humor. He rose at noon, taciturn and distraught, and went to drive with his mistress. I often saw them pass. Leoni when with her had the same discreetly triumphant air, the same coquettish bearing, the same fond and happy expression that he once had with me; now I had only his complaints and a narrative of his vexations. To be sure, I preferred to have him come to me careworn and disgusted by his slavery, to being tranquil and indifferent, as sometimes happened. It seemed at those times that he had forgotten the love he had once had for me and that which I still had for him. He found it altogether natural to confide to me the details of his intimacy with another, and did not perceive that the smile on my face as I listened to him was a mute convulsion of pain.
One evening, at sunset, I was coming out of the cathedral, where I had prayed fervently to God to call me back to him and to accept my sufferings in expiation of my faults. I walked slowly through the magnificent portal and leaned from time to time against a pillar, for I was very weak. A slow fever was consuming me. The excitement of prayer and the atmosphere of the church had bathed me in a cold perspiration. I resembled a spectre risen from the sepulchral vaults of the edifice to look once more upon the last rays of the sun. A man who had been following me for some time, without attracting my attention particularly, spoke to me, and I turned, without surprise or alarm, with the apathy of a dying woman. I recognized Henryet.