It was raining; I had silk stockings on, and I longed for a carriage. I took shelter under the portal of a church, and turned my fine overcoat inside out, so as not to look like an abbé. At that moment a peasant happened to come along, and I asked him if a carriage could be had to drive me to Cesena. “I have one, sir,” he said, “but I live half a league from here.”
“Go and get it, I will wait for you here.”
While I was waiting for the return of the peasant with his vehicle, some forty mules laden with provisions came along the road towards Rimini. It was still raining fast, and the mules passing close by me, I placed my hand mechanically upon the neck of one of them, and following the slow pace of the animals I re-entered Rimini without the slightest notice being taken of me, even by the drivers of the mules. I gave some money to the first street urchin I met, and he took me to Thérèse’s house.
With my hair fastened under a night-cap, my hat pulled down over my face, and my fine cane concealed under my coat, I did not look a very elegant figure. I enquired for Bellino’s mother, and the mistress of the house took me to a room where I found all the family, and Thérèse in a woman’s dress. I had reckoned upon surprising them, but Petronio had told them of our meeting, and they were expecting me. I gave a full account of my adventures, but Thérèse, frightened at the danger that threatened me, and in spite of her love, told me that it was absolutely necessary for me to go to Bologna, as I had been advised by M. Vais, the officer.
“I know him,” she said, “and he is a worthy man, but he comes here every evening, and you must conceal yourself.”
It was only eight o’clock in the morning; we had the whole day before us, and everyone promised to be discreet. I allayed Thérèse’s anxiety by telling her that I could easily contrive to leave the city without being observed.
Thérèse took me to her own room, where she told me that she had met the manager of the theatre on her arrival in Rimini, and that he had taken her at once to the apartments engaged for the family. She had informed him that she was a woman, and that she had made up her mind not to appear as a castrato any more; he had expressed himself delighted at such news, because women could appear on the stage at Rimini, which was not under the same legate as Ancona. She added that her engagement would be at an end by the 1st of May, and that she would meet me wherever it would be agreeable to me to wait for her.
“As soon as I can get a passport,” I said, “there is nothing to hinder me from remaining near you until the end of your engagement. But as M. Vais calls upon you, tell me whether you have informed him of my having spent a few days in Ancona?”
“I did, and I even told him that you had been arrested because you had lost your passport.”
I understood why the officer had smiled as he was talking with me. After my conversation with Thérèse, I received the compliments of the mother and of the young sisters who appeared to me less cheerful and less free than they had been in Ancona. They felt that Bellino, transformed into Thérèse, was too formidable a rival. I listened patiently to all the complaints of the mother who maintained that, in giving up the character of castrato, Thérèse had bidden adieu to fortune, because she might have earned a thousand sequins a year in Rome.