"So everything is lost, even my mother's esteem; everything is poisoned, even the memory of Switzerland! Those six months of love and happiness were devoted to covering up a theft."
"And to eluding the pursuit of the police," added Henryet.
"No! no!" I cried wildly, looking at him as if to question him; "he loved me! it is certain that he loved me! I cannot think of that time without being absolutely certain of his love. He was a thief who had stolen a maid and a jewel-chest, and who loved them both."
Henryet shrugged his shoulders; I realized that I was wandering; and, struggling to recover my reason, I insisted upon knowing the explanation of the incredible power he possessed over Leoni.
"You want to know that?" he said. He reflected a moment, then continued: "I will tell you, I can safely tell you; indeed, it is impossible that you can have lived with him a year without suspecting it. He must have made dupes enough at Venice under your eyes."
"Made dupes! he! how so? Oh! be careful what you say, Henryet! he is burdened with accusations enough already."
"I believe that you are incapable as yet of being his accomplice, Juliette; but beware that you do not become so; be careful for your family's sake. I do not know to what point the impunity of a swindler's mistress extends."
"You are killing me with shame, monsieur; your words are cruel; pray complete your work and break my heart altogether by telling me what gives you the right of life and death, so to speak, over Leoni? Where have you known him? what do you know of his past life? I know nothing of it myself, alas! I have seen so many contradictory things about him that I no longer know whether he is rich or poor, noble or plebeian; I do not even know if the name he bears belongs to him."
"That is the only thing that chance saved him the trouble of stealing," Henryet replied. "His name is really Leone Leoni, and he belongs to one of the noblest families of Venice. His father had a small fortune and occupied the palace in which you recently lived. He had an unbounded fondness for this only son, whose precocious talents indicated a superior mental organization. Leoni was educated with care, and, when he was fifteen years old, travelled over half of Europe with his tutor. In five years he learned with incredible ease the language, literature and manners of the countries he visited. His father's death brought him back to Venice with his tutor. This tutor was Abbé Zanini, whom you must have seen frequently at your house last winter. I do not know whether you formed an accurate judgment of him; he is a man of vivid imagination, of exquisite mental keenness, of immense learning, but inconceivably immoral and extremely cowardly beneath a hypocritical exterior of tolerance and sound common-sense. He had naturally depraved his pupil's conscience, and had replaced a proper understanding of justice and injustice in his mind by an alleged knowledge of life, which consisted in committing all the amusing escapades, all the profitable sins, all the actions, good and evil, which can possibly tempt the human heart. I knew this Zanini at Paris, and I remember hearing him say that one must know how to do evil in order to know how to do good, and that one must be able to find enjoyment in vice in order to be able to find enjoyment in virtue. This man, who is more prudent, more adroit and more cold-blooded than Leoni, is much superior to him in knowledge; and Leoni, carried away by his passions or baulked by his caprices, follows him at a distance, making innumerable false moves which are certain to ruin him in society, and which indeed have already ruined him, since he is at the mercy of a few grasping confederates and a few honest men, whose generosity he will soon tire out."
A deathlike chill froze my blood while Henryet was speaking thus. I had to make an effort to listen to the rest.