"Wretch!" I cried.
"Juliette," he said, with haggard eyes and in a muffled voice, "yield if you love me. It is a question of rescuing me from this destitution, in which, as you see, I am eating my heart out. It is a question of life and reason with me, as you know. My salvation will be the reward of your devotion; and, as for yourself, you will be rich and happy with a man who has loved you for a long while, and who considers no price too great to pay to obtain you. Consent, Juliette," he added under his breath, "or I will kill you when he has left the room."
Terror deprived me of all judgment. I jumped through the window at the risk of killing myself. Some soldiers who were passing picked me up and carried me into the house unconscious. When I came to myself, Leoni and his confederates had left the house. They declared that I had jumped from the window in the delirium of brain fever, while they had gone into another room to call for help. They had feigned the greatest consternation. Leoni had remained until the surgeon who attended me declared that I had broken no bones. Then he had gone out saying that he would return, but he had not been seen for two days. He did not return, and I never saw him again.
Here Juliette finished her narrative and fell back on her couch, overwhelmed with fatigue and sadness.
"It was then, my poor child," I said, "that I made your acquaintance. I was living in the same house. The story of your accident aroused my interest. Soon I learned that you were young and worthy of a serious attachment; that Leoni, after treating you with great brutality, had abandoned you when you were critically ill and in want. I desired to see you; you were delirious when I approached your bed. O, Juliette, how lovely you were, with your bare shoulders, your dishevelled hair, your lips burning with the fire of fever, and your face animated by the excitement of suffering! How lovely you still seemed to me when, prostrated by fatigue, you fell back on your pillow, pale and drooping, like a white rose shedding its leaves in the hot sun of midday! I could not tear myself away from you. I felt a thrill of irresistible sympathy; I was impelled by such a deep interest as nobody had ever aroused in me. I sent for the leading physicians of the city; I procured for you all the comforts that you lacked. Poor deserted girl! I passed whole nights by your bedside, I saw your despair, I understood your love. I had never loved; it seemed to me that no woman was capable of returning the passion that I was capable of feeling. I sought a heart as fervent as mine. I distrusted all those that I put to the test, and I soon realized the prudence of my self-restraint when I saw the coldness and frivolity of the hearts of those women. Yours seemed to me the only one capable of understanding me. A woman who could love and suffer as you had done was the realization of all my dreams. I desired to obtain your affection, but without much hope of success. What gave me the presumption to try to console you was my absolute certainty that I loved you sincerely and generously. All that you said in your delirium taught me to know you just as well and thoroughly as our subsequent intimacy has done. I knew that you were a sublime creature from the prayers that you addressed to God, aloud, in a tone of which no words can describe the heart-rending purity. You prayed for forgiveness for Leoni, always forgiveness, never vengeance! You invoked the souls of your parents; you described to them breathlessly the misfortunes by which you had expiated your flight and their sorrow. Sometimes you took me for Leoni, and poured out crushing reproaches upon me; at other times you thought that you were with him in Switzerland, and you embraced me passionately. It would have been easy for me then to abuse your error, and the love that was gaining headway in my breast made your frantic caresses a veritable torture. But I would have died rather than yield to my desires, and the villainy of Lord Edwards, of which you talked constantly, seems to me the most degrading infamy of which a man could be guilty. At last I had the good fortune to save your life and your reason, my dear Juliette. Since then I have suffered bitterly, and I have been very happy through you. I am a fool perhaps not to be content with the friendship and the possession of such a woman as you, but my love is insatiable. I long to be loved as Leoni was, and I torment you with that foolish ambition. I have not his eloquence and his fascinations, but I love you. I have not deceived you; I will never deceive you. It is time for your heart, so long shattered by fatigue, to find rest while sleeping on mine. Juliette! Juliette! when will you love me as you are capable of loving?"
"Now and forever," she replied. "You saved me, you cured me, and you love me. I was mad, I see it now, to love such a man. All this that I have told you has brought before my eyes anew a multitude of vile things. Now I feel nothing but horror for the past, and I do not mean to recur to it again. You have done well to let me tell it all to you. I am calm now, and I feel that I can never again love his memory. You are my friend; you are my savior, my brother and my lover."
"Say your husband too, Juliette, I implore you!"
"My husband, if you will," she said, embracing me with a fondness which she had never manifested so warmly, and which brought tears of joy and gratitude to my eyes.
[XXIII]
I awoke the next day so happy that I thought no more about leaving Venice. The weather was superb, the sun as mild as in spring. Fashionably dressed women thronged the quays and laughed at the jests of the maskers, who, half reclining on the rails of the bridges, teased the passers-by, and made impertinent and flattering remarks to the ugly and pretty women respectively. It was Mardi Gras; a sad anniversary for Juliette. I was anxious to distract her thoughts, so suggested that we should go out, and she agreed.