"Come, come!" said Giovanni, passing the girl's arm through his; "let us go away, first of all, from this fortress; the neighborhood of the Grand Châtelet is not healthy for me."
The girl allowed her lover to lead her away; it mattered little to her whither he took her; she was with the man to whom she had given her heart and had sworn to devote her life. That great city which she did not know, the darkness that encompassed her, the distant outcries that reached her ears from time to time—thenceforth none of those things frightened her, for she held Giovanni's arm.
The false Bohemian kept the girl walking for some time, pressing her arm as soon as she attempted to speak, and motioning to her to maintain the most profound silence. But Miretta's conductor seemed to know Paris perfectly, and its most crooked, most deserted streets. After leading her through several dark and narrow lanes, he came out on a small square, stopped in front of a house, took a key from his pocket, opened the door, and led his companion into the hall, saying:
"This is the hôtel where I live; give me your hand and let me lead you. Don't be afraid; in a moment we shall be able to see; make no noise."
"Afraid! afraid! when I am with you! ah! you know me very little! See, here is my hand! does it tremble? I am with you; what does it matter to me where you take me? I shall always be happy with you."
A slight pressure of the hand replied to these words from Miretta; then her guide led her up a staircase, stopped on the first floor, softly opened a door, and ushered the girl into an apartment, where, by means of a lamp burning at the back of the hearth, he speedily lighted several candles. Giovanni then laid aside his cap, his wig, his great cloak, and revealed a young man with a refined Italian face, whom we have already seen in the plumed hat of the soi-disant Comte de Carvajal, a guest at the Hôtel du Sanglier, to which he had taken Miretta.
When she saw her lover stripped of all that paraphernalia which disguised him, the girl ran to him and threw herself into his arms, crying:
"Ah! now you are as I knew you at Milan; as you were when you invited me to dance, the first time we met at the Balestrino. How gladly I accepted! How happy I felt even then to be dancing with you! for, you know, I fell in love with you on the spot. That sentiment which was destined to bind me to you struck me to the heart like thought, like lightning. It is always like that when love is genuine, when it is destined to last forever. Isn't it so, my beloved? And you loved me at once, too, did you not?"
As Giovanni listened to Miretta, his eyes assumed an expression of tender melancholy. He had thrown himself on a sofa; he drew the young girl to a seat by his side, took one of her hands, which he put to his lips from time to time, and said in an undertone:
"Speak, speak on; you recall a very happy time!"