I turned these thoughts over in my own mind, and fortified myself in this resolve; but at last I said,—
“No, your behaviour proves that you do not wish to see me now, and your wishes shall be respected; but I must see you once before I die.”
Marcoline scarcely dared breathe to see me thus motionless and lost in thought, and I do not know when I should have come to myself if the landlord had not come in saying that he remembered my tastes, and had got me a delicious supper. This brought me to my senses, and I made my fair Venetian happy again by embracing her in a sort of ecstacy.
“Do you know,” she said, “you quite frightened me? You were as pale and still as a dead man, and remained for a quarter of an hour in a kind of swoon, the like of which I have never seen. What is the reason? I knew that the countess was acquainted with you, but I should never have thought that her name by itself could have such an astonishing effect.”
“Well, it is strange; but how did you find out that the countess knew me?”
“She told me as much twenty times over in the night, but she made me promise to say nothing about it till I had given you the letter.”
“What did she say to you about me?”
“She only repeated in different ways what she has written for an address.”
“What a letter it is! Her name, and nothing more.”
“It is very strange.”