“Only because it’s the way I passed with Pangrazio, and it renewed a sweet memory of him.”
“That won’t do for me! What was the real reason?”
“What will you give me if I tell you?”
“Nothing. But if you don’t tell me, I shall know how to make you.”
Giuseppa’s courage failed her when she heard him talk like this. She knew she had given herself to him of her own will, and so she belonged to him, and she could not help herself; and now, the best course she could think of was to tell him of the treasure, and trust to the good humour it would put him in, for he was very avaricious, to get her forgiveness out of him.
Clamer came back from a walk outside the town—where he had gone to get cool after his wife’s scolding—just in time to see Luxehale spread his wings and fly away with Giuseppa in his arms. He called to her, but she did not hear him; and all he could do was to stand watching them till they were out of sight.
He came back so gloomy and dejected that his friend Eligio Righi was quite distressed to see him. He was so sympathizing, indeed, that Pangrazio could not forbear telling him the whole story. “Then, if that is so, you need not regret being quit of her,” moralized his sage friend: “she was no wife for an honest man. And as for the treasure, you have enough without that. It was but ill-gotten gain which came to you for knowledge obtained from such a source.”