“You are as pretty as you were twenty-six years ago, and if it had not been for the Abbé Galiani I should have left Naples without seeing you.”
I found Leonilda had developed into a perfect beauty. She was at that time twenty-three years old.
Her husband’s presence was no constraint upon her; she received me with open arms, and put me completely at my ease.
No doubt she was my daughter, but in spite of our relationship and my advancing years I still felt within my breast the symptoms of the tenderest passion for her.
She presented me to her husband, who suffered dreadfully from gout, and could not stir from his arm-chair.
He received me with smiling face and open arms, saying,—
“My dear friend, embrace me.”
I embraced him affectionately, and in our greeting I discovered that he was a brother mason. The marquis had expected as much, but I had not; for a nobleman of sixty who could boast that he had been enlightened was a ‘rara avis’ in the domains of his Sicilian majesty thirty years ago.
I sat down beside him and we embraced each other again, while the ladies looked on amazed, wondering to see us so friendly to each other.
Donna Leonilda fancied that we must be old friends, and told her husband how delighted she was. The old man burst out laughing, and Lucrezia suspecting the truth bit her lips and said nothing. The fair marchioness reserved her curiosity for another reason.