“But be quiet, hush!” Carolinona had implored him. “Are you speaking seriously, Signor Bertolli? What do you want of me? Let me alone!”
“I can not! I love you. Do you love another? We shall see.”
“But I love no one. Are you trying to make fun of me? At my age? This is the last straw! And pray who would fall in love with me, Signor Bertolli?”
“I! And I have told you so!”
“Pardon me, but this is madness. And not even laughable. Let me be—I am a poor woman.”
The Pentoni knew very well the vile calumnies which had been circulated about her, but she had not even tried to contradict them. What did it matter to her? She was conscious of her virtue, long resigned to discretion because of her sad lot, and that sufficed her. And how could calumnies harm her now? She knew that she was ugly; she was already thirty-five years old, and might have been fifty as far as she was concerned; she had never flattered herself that a man could fall in love with her; she had never even had the time to think that fate might perhaps concede her a different lot, the compensation of some affection in the dark poverty which had always oppressed her, weighed upon her, and against which she had sought courageously to defend herself with every means in her power. Did people believe that in her life there had been some slip from the path of virtue, or even more than one? Very well, let them believe it! At heart this not only no longer offended her, but almost flattered her self-love, her deep-rooted feminine instinct. She closed her eyes. But it was not true. No one had ever cared for her, save this insane Cocco Bertolli. It would have been laughable had the poor fellow not worn such a tragic expression.
“Must I go away then?” he asked.
“Why, no; stay!” she hastened to reply. “But you must think no more of such madness.”
“I can not help it! When an idea has taken root here, it will not leave me, even if my head were to be broken open with Vulcan’s hammer. You know that. And know that my proposals were honest, and always will be. Carolina, will you be my wife?”
She had begun to laugh at such a precipitate proposal, but Cocco Bertolli, furious, checked the laugh on her very lips.