“Mamma, I have always been used to truthful women. You are one of them. Vittoria is a hypocrite.”
“You are unjust and cruel to her.”
“Certainly. I recognise it. But she has done everything to make me so. If only you knew, mamma, what I was to her at the beginning! If only you knew! Suffering, weak and exhausted by an immense passion, I tried to conquer myself. I searched for strength, for gaiety, for tenderness to give them to Vittoria. Since it was said to me: render this woman happy, do this work of repentance and beauty, I have tried to obey, mamma; but everything has been useless. Vittoria has not understood me.”
“Perhaps you have not understood her. She loved you ardently from the first moment of her engagement; she still loves you so.”
“No, mamma, no. Either Vittoria does not love me or she does not know how to love.”
“So young, so inexperienced, and so ignorant!”
“Mother, mother, Vittoria knew everything. All my violent and brutal betrayal has told her that my only and unique love romance has been with Maria Guasco; the only one, mamma. She dreamed of making another in matrimony, another romance of passion and madness, as if matrimony were not a union wise and tender, sweet and profound, not passionate and frenetic.”
“She deceived herself. She hoped for too much. She dared to hope too much. Don’t punish her for that.”
“It is she who has punished me for having wished to make her happy. All my affection has seemed little to her, all my tenderness has seemed mean to her. But you know, mamma, how she and she only has spurned me. You know that I have seen all my proofs of affection refused.”
“O Dio mio!”