"Your most obedient, faithful, humble servant,
"COUNT AMADEO GIRALDI.
"P. S.—It may be discreet in you to repair to Lucca for the summer heats. Pray command me in any occasion you may have."
My doors were set open. The first use I made of my freedom was to escort Donna Aurelia to her chair. Without a word spoken between us, I handed her in and shut to the door. The chairman asked me for a direction.
"To the house of Dr. Lanfranchi the learned judge," I said.
CHAPTER XLVII
THE FINAL PROOF
Free in every sense of the term—free, of prison, free of debt (for if Aurelia had paid me, I had now paid her husband), free of every obligation but guilt, I was all on fire for Lucca and that service which is perfect freedom, voluntary bondage to Virginia, whom I could now love whole-heartedly as she deserved. Artemis! Artemis! Chaster than a fire— what wonder is it that she had prevailed in that dream-strife which I had witnessed in the villa garden, what wonder when she had to contend with the soiled wife of a vile man—with Aurelia, the lovely, caressing, silken woman, bought by a place, bought by a house, who, possessed by two men, sought yet another. Ah, thou glowing, honey-tongued, unhappy one, in what a horrible web of affairs was I enmeshed along with thee! What a world was that into which I went ruffling with my money, and rank and fine prospects! Never more, never more would I enter that world of bargain and sale.
So I swore, and so purposed; but in pursuance of a plan which I had formed in my most private mind, I travelled to Lucca in a coach and four horses, with postillions before and my body-servant behind. On this occasion I was furnished with a passport and abundance of money. All my property in Florence, all my household gear had been transferred to the city of my choice. I left behind me in Florence not one vestige of myself, and (so far as I know) not one true friend. I intended to be two days upon the road, and lay the night at Empoli; early on the following morning, a fine day in early autumn, I departed from the inn for my final stage, and fared without incident as far as Ponte a Cappiano.
Before the hill of Altopascio is reached, the traveller must accomplish a lonely stretch of road, which runs for some three miles through a ragged wood. This place bears a bad name; it is debatable land, as we say, between the Republic of Lucca and the Grand Duchy, and a well-known haunt for footpads, highwaymen, outlaws, and other kinds of cut-throat. So, at least, my servant said when, stopping the carriage, I got out and proposed to walk through the wood by a direct path and meet my conveyance at the top of the pass. He begged me very earnestly to do nothing of the kind. "The road is the only tolerable way for your lordship," he assured me; and then, with a start, he added, "Hark, sir, hark! As I live by bread, we are pursued even now." I listened, and could hear a long way off the regular pounding of a horse.