“And to what purpose do you confess all this to me, poveretta?”
“I have been seven years getting my courage together. Oh! if I had only confessed to you then, it would not have caused me so much sorrow, this cowardly heart. But I knew that you must come back, Filippo; only that it would last for such a long time, that I did not know—that made me sad. I am a child to speak so. Why trouble myself about what is past? Filippo, you are there, and I am here and yours always, always!”
“Dear child,” he began softly, and then silenced what was on the tip of his tongue. But she did not perceive how quietly and thoughtfully he was standing before her, staring vacantly beyond her toward the wall. She continued speaking calmly; it was as if the words had long become familiar to her, as if she had imagined them a thousand times in her loneliness: He will come and thus and so will you speak to him.
“I had many an opportunity to marry up here, and while I was at Florence. I wanted you only. When they implored me and spoke honeyed words to me, your voice sounded out of that far-away night, your speeches that were sweeter than all other words in the world. For several years now they have been leaving me in peace, although I am not old yet, and am still as—fair as ever I was. It was as if they all knew you were coming back soon.” Then again: “Where are you going to take me now? Will you remain up here? No, for you, that will never do. Since I was in Florence I have learned that life in the mountains is dreary. We will sell the house and the herds, then I shall be rich. I am tired of the wild life of these people up here. In Florence they had to teach me all a young city woman should know, and they were astonished how quickly I learned everything. Truly I had little time to spare, and all my dreams kept telling me that it would be up here where you would seek me again. I inquired, too, of a fortune-teller, and it has all turned out just as she said.”
“And if I already have a wife?”
She looked straight at him from her full height. “You are only wishing to prove me, Filippo! You have no wife. That, too, the fortune-teller told me. But where you lived, that she did not know.”
“You are right, Fenice, I have no wife. But whence does she know, or you, that I shall ever be willing to take one?”
“How could you not wish for me?” said she with unshaken confidence.
“Sit down here by me, Fenice! I have much to tell you. Give me your hand; promise that you will hear me patiently to the end, my poor little friend!” As she did none of all these things, he continued with a quickening pulse, standing in front of her, his eyes resting sadly upon her, while her own, as if foreboding something that would threaten her very life, now closed and now strayed to the ground.
“For years I have been compelled to keep away from Florence,” he began. “As you know, there were at that time those political uprisings, that kept wavering so long, this way and that. I am a lawyer, and so know hosts of people, and write and receive a great number of letters throughout the year. Added to this, I was an independent, spoke my mind when it was necessary and was heartily hated, although I never wished to thrust any hand of mine into their secret game. Finally it became necessary for me to fly if I wished to escape an endless trial and imprisonment that would be neither for profit nor purpose. I went to Bologna, practised law for a living, and saw few people, women least of all; for of the gay young fellow for whom you have been wearing your heart out for seven years, there is nothing left, except that my head, or my heart, if you will, is still ready to burst if I can not be conquering something—in these days to be sure something other than the bolt of a pretty girl’s bedroom door. You have heard, perhaps, how at the last there was also a disturbance at Bologna. They had arrested certain highly respected men, among them one whose way of living I had known for a long time, and knew, too, that his spirit was far from these matters. After that a miserable government undertook to reform matters, much as if a sickness had broken out among your sheep and you sent a wolf into the fold. But that is neither here nor there. Enough that my friend begged me to plead his cause for him, and that I helped him to gain his freedom. No sooner had this become known, when one day a wretched fellow came running up to me on the street and covered me with insults. I could not get rid of him except by thrusting him aside with my arm against his chest, for he was intoxicated. Scarcely had I found myself out of the crowd and had stepped into a café, when there came toward me a relative of this man, also intoxicated, not with wine but with venom and anger, and upbraided me as if I had been guilty of answering words with blows, instead of doing what every man of honor would have done. I answered as calmly as I could, for I now perceived that the whole affair was a preconcerted plan of the government to force me shamelessly into a duel. So one word led to another until my enemy at last won his game. He pretended that he was obliged to go into Tuscany, and insisted that the affair should be settled over there. I agreed, for it was time that one of us calm members should prove to the hot-heads that the cause of our restraint was not lack of spirit, but simply the hopelessness of all private intrigue when opposed to such superior power. But when, the day before yesterday, I applied for a passport, it was refused me—unless I were willing to give my reasons; these were the orders of the supreme authority, so they said. It was now clear to me that they wanted either to draw me into disgrace by causing me to miss the duel, or to force me to steal over the border in some sort of disguise, where I could safely be caught in ambush. Then they would have pretext enough to bring legal action against me and to prolong the trial to suit their convenience.”