“He doesn’t seem to me to be a very jealous man.”
“He is entirely free from jealousy, and if Leonilda would take a lover I am sure he would be his best friend. And I feel certain he would be only too glad to find the beautiful soil which he cannot fertile himself fertilized by another.”
“Is it positively certain that he is incapable of begetting a child?”
“No, when he is well he does his best; but there seems no likelihood of his ardour having any happy results. There was some ground to hope in the first six months of the marriage, but since he has had the gout so badly there seems reason to fear lest his amorous ecstasies should have a fatal termination. Sometimes he wants to approach her, but she dare not let him, and this pains her very much.”
I was struck with a lively sense of Lucrezia’s merits, and was just revealing to her the sentiments which she had re-awakened in my breast, when the marchioness appeared in the garden, followed by a page and a young lady.
I affected great reverence as she came up to us; and as if we had given each other the word, she answered me in atone of ceremonious politeness.
“I have come on an affair of the highest importance,” she said, “and if I fail I shall for ever lose the reputation of a diplomatist.”
“Who is the other diplomatist with whom you are afraid of failing?”
“‘Tis yourself.”
“Then your battle is over, for I consent before I know what you ask. I only make a reserve on one point.”