"How do you know that, my dear?" I asked.
She stretched out her arms. "How do I know? Hear him! How do I know that my mother is a woman and my father a man? Dio buono! Have I lived in my sty with my eyes shut? And herded with thieves, and taken them for marchesi? But you shall be fed, Don Francis. Leave that to me. Do you stay here quietly, I will get you some food."
I said that I must come with her, whereupon she began to cry bitterly, to call me heartless and cruel, to pity herself in the most deplorable terms. She nursed and fondled herself by name. "Povera Virginia! Poor little Virginia, that works so hard for her tyrant and gives herself no rest. But he is cruel—more cruel than if he beat her—stabs her heart with cold words, rends it with sharp fingers. Poor little Virginia, poor little outcast from the Madonna!"
I have not a heart of stone: I confess that her distress made me dreadfully ashamed. This good soul, whose only happiness lay in mine, who had trusted her all in all to me without flinching, whose life was now at my disposal as her honour had been for so long. Unworthy of the name of man had I been if I could wound her so lightly. I put my arm round her waist and drew her towards me with tenderness. I took her hands from her face and implored her forgiveness. I promised to offend her no more, to stay in the cloister until she came, to sleep in the Sagrestia, to do all her behests. In answer, the sun came out in her face. She listened to me with soft rapture, beautiful to see, and before I had done, the dear, generous creature snatched at my hand, and, kneeling, kissed it with a frenzy of devotion which brought the tears to my eyes. Immediately afterwards she was gone on her errand of mercy, leaving me in a glow of truly honest gratitude, which was to have its speedy fruit in an act which, though it fell short of my intention, was to prove for my ultimate content.
CHAPTER XXIX
I TAKE SANCTUARY
Past fatigues and present danger did not disturb my happy meditations. I paced the cloister of San Lorenzo without regard for them, absorbed in considering my future conduct, and the relationship in which I stood to my little world of circumstance. It was necessary that I should make plans for myself and for Virginia, and I made and rejected many without modifying them one and all, as well I might have done, by allowing for the part which the gallows, the gaol or the hulks might play in them. As my habit has always been, I endeavoured to judge the case upon its merits, and to adjust myself to it, not so much according to my desires as to my duties towards it. Here—to remind the reader—are the three factors of my problem.
1. I had, of my own act, withdrawn myself from Aurelia's society, having done her all the reparation I could, and obtained her forgiveness.
2. I had constituted myself Virginia's champion against the Marchese Semifonte.
3. I had killed Fra Palamone.