All this time she was working like a woolcarder at the disordered room, but could not refrain her tongue from caustic comments upon my behaviour. "Wicked, wicked Don Francis! Nay, complete and perfect fool rather, who, because a lady is kind to you, believes her to be dying for your love. Your love indeed! What is your precious love worth beside the doctor's? Have you a position the greatest in the university? Have you years, gravity, authority, money in the funds? Why, are you breeched yet? Have you tired of sugar-sticks? What next?" So she went on grumbling and scolding until the doctor came grunting to the open door with Aurelia upon his arm.
He was, as usual, out of breath and angry. He was also, I judged, embarrassed and fretted by the ministrations of Aurelia.
"My curse," I heard him say, "my undying curse upon the man who built this house. Twice a day am I to scale a mountain? Wife, wife, you strangle me!"
"Oh, dear friend! Oh, dear friend!" 'Twas the voice of Aurelia. "Are you come back to your poor girl?"
"Hey," cried he testily, "do I seem to be absent? I wish you would talk sense. These infernal stairs rob us all of our wits, it seems."
"I am very foolish," said Aurelia, and I heard her trouble in her tones.
"I have been waiting so long—so very long."
"There, my child, there," said he, and kissed her. "Now be pleased to let me into my house." With a sigh, which I heard, she released him, and he came stamping into the room. I trembled in my shameful retreat.
The reflections of a young man of sensibility, ear-witness against his will of the chaste and sanctioned familiarities of a man and wife, must always be mingled of sweet and bitter; but when to the natural force of these is added horror of a crime and the shame arising from discovery of utter delusion, the reader may imagine the stormy sea of torment in which I laboured. In a word, I was to discover a new Aurelia—Aurelia the affectionate wife, the careful minister; not the adored mistress of a feverish boy, the heroine of a Vita Nuova, the Beatrice of a, I fear me, profane comedy, the beloved of Aminta and the Pastor Fido. I own that I was dismayed, wounded in my tenderest part, at the discovery. Aurelia had suddenly become a stranger to my heart. I was nothing, less than nothing, to her now that she was alone with her husband. Beside the care of his appetite for food, my labours upon Guicciardini—the toil of a month of nights—was as the work of an ant in the dust. Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands. Oh, bitter tonic discovery! How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine. I do not feel equal to the task of relating all that I overheard; if I could have stopped my ears, I would have done it. She tempted him, beguiled him to eat, to praise her, to be at ease, to love her. With that liquid tongue of hers, which would have melted a flinty core, she talked of his and her affairs; she was interested in his commentary upon the Pandects, she was indignant at the jealousy of Dr. This, she made light of the malice of Professor That. With flying feet from table to kitchen and back, with dexterous hands at bottle, platter or napkin, she ministered to his slightest whims. She refused to allow Nonna to wait upon him; she must do everything for him for this once.
And when, amid his flung ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his "Non c'e male," his "Buono, buono!" his "Ancora un po'," or "Dammi da here," he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice I heard her reply, "It is because—it is because—I have not always been good to you, Porfirio. It is because—of late—this evening—I have much wished for you to be here. It is because—-"
"Cospetto!" I heard the doctor cry, "what is the meaning of this? Come here, my dear." And then, when she went to him and sat upon his knee, I heard him murmur his endearments—ah, and I heard her soft and broken replies! And I knew very well that in her heart she was reproaching herself for what I alone had done, and by her humble appeal for kindness was craving his forgiveness for offences for which I could never hope to be forgiven.