But Gonzo intended to keep that story for the marchesa, who had asked him to dinner. Very curtly, therefore, he despatched the tale, and the marchese, half asleep, went off to take his siesta. With the poor marchesa Gonzo followed quite a different system. So youthful and so simple had she remained, in spite of all her riches, that she thought herself obliged to atone for the roughness with which the marchese had just spoken to Gonzo. Delighted with his success, the little man recovered all his eloquence, and made it his pleasure, no less than his duty, to supply her with endless details.
Little Annetta Marini paid as much as a sequin for every place kept for her at the sermons. She always attended them with two of her aunts, and her father’s old bookkeeper. The seats, which she had kept for her overnight, were generally opposite the pulpit, rather toward the high altar, for she had remarked that the coadjutor frequently turned toward the high altar. Now, what the public had also remarked, was that, not unfrequently, the young preacher’s speaking eyes rested complacently on the youthful heiress, in her piquant beauty, and apparently, too, with some attention. For once his eyes were fixed on her, his discourse became learned; it bristled with quotations, the emotional note in his eloquence disappeared, and the ladies, whose interest in the sermon instantly disappeared likewise, began to look at Annetta, and speak evil of her.
Three times over Clelia made him repeat these extraordinary details. At the end of the third time she grew very thoughtful. She was reckoning up that it was just fourteen months since she had seen Fabrizio.
“Would it be very wrong,” said she to herself, “if I spent an hour in a church, not to see Fabrizio, but to listen to a famous preacher? Besides, I would sit far away from the pulpit, and I would only look at Fabrizio once when I came in, and another time at the end of his sermon.… No,” she added, “it is not to see Fabrizio that I am going, it is to hear this extraordinary preacher.” In the midst of all these arguments the marchesa was pricked with remorse. She had behaved so well for fourteen months! “Well,” she thought at last, to pacify herself a little, “if the first woman who comes this evening has been to hear Monsignore del Dongo preach I will go too; if she has not been, I will refrain.”
Once she had made up her mind, the marchesa filled Gonzo with delight by saying to him:
“Will you try to find out what day the coadjutor is going to preach, and in what church? This evening, before you leave, I may perhaps have a commission for you.”
Hardly had Gonzo departed for the Corso than Clelia went out into the palace garden. The objection that she had never set her foot in it for ten months did not occur to her. She was eager and animated, the colour had come back to her face. That evening, as each tiresome guest entered her drawing-room, her heart throbbed with emotion. Gonzo was announced at last, and he instantly perceived that for the next week he was destined to be the one indispensable person. “The marchesa is jealous of the little Marini girl, and on my soul,” he thought, “a comedy in which she will play the leading part, with little Annetta for the soubrette, and Monsignore del Dongo for the lover, will be something worth seeing. Faith, I’d go so far as to pay two francs for my place.” He was beside himself with delight, and the whole evening he kept taking the words out of everybody’s mouth and telling the most preposterous tales (as, for instance, that of the Marquis de Pecquiny and the famous actress, which he had heard the night before from a French traveller). The marchesa, on her part, could not sit quiet; she walked about the drawing-room, she moved into the adjacent gallery, into which the marchese would admit no picture which had not cost more than twenty thousand francs. That evening those pictures spoke so clearly to her that they made her heart ache with emotion. At last she heard the great doors thrown open, and hurried back to the drawing-room. It was the Marchesa Raversi. But when Clelia endeavoured to receive her with the usual compliments, she felt her voice fail her. Twice over the marchesa had to make her repeat the question, “What do you think of this fashionable preacher?” which she had not caught at first.
“I did look upon him as a little schemer, the very worthy nephew of the illustrious Countess Mosca. But the last time he preached, look you, at the Church of the Visitation, opposite your house, he was so sublime that all my hatred died down, and I consider him the most eloquent man I have ever heard in my life.”
“Then you have attended at his sermons?” said Clelia, shaking with happiness.
“Why, weren’t you listening to me?” said the marchesa, laughing. “I would not miss them for anything on earth. They say his lungs are affected, and that soon he won’t preach any more.”