Vanina, astonished, pushed back her chair and stood up at once.
“I am aware,” continued the carbonaro, “that this confession will cause me to lose the only good thing that attaches me to life; but it is unworthy of me to deceive you. I am called Pietro Missirilli; I am nineteen years old; my father is a poor surgeon at Sant’ Angelo in Vado, for my part I am a carbonaro. Our lodge was surprised; I was brought, in chains, from Romagna to Rome. Buried in a dungeon lighted night and day by a lamp, I passed thirteen months there. A charitable soul conceived the idea of rescuing me. They dressed me in women’s clothes. As I was coming out of prison and was passing the warders at the last door, one of them cursed the carbonari; I gave him a slap. I assure you that this was not a piece of vain bravado, but simply thoughtlessness. Pursued through the streets of Rome at night after this imprudence, wounded with bayonets, fast losing my strength, I rushed up the stairs of a mansion, the door of which was open; I heard the soldiers coming up after me; I sprang into the garden; I fell down only a few paces from a woman who was walking there.”
“The Countess Vitteleschi, my father’s friend!” said Vanina.
“What! Has she told you?” exclaimed Missirilli. “In any case, the lady, whose name must never be uttered, saved my life. As the soldiers came into her house to seize me, your father took me out of it in his carriage. I feel very ill; for some days this bayonet-wound in my shoulder has prevented me from breathing. I am going to die, in despair, too, because I shall not see you again.”
Vanina had listened with impatience; she went out hastily: Missirilli could discover no pity in her fine eyes; only the expression of a haughty character which had been wounded.
At night, a surgeon appeared; he was alone. Missirilli was in despair; he feared that he would never see Vanina again. He questioned the surgeon, who bled him and gave him no answer. The succeeding days, the same silence. Pietro’s eyes never left the terrace-window by which Vanina had been accustomed to enter; he was very unhappy. Once, about midnight, he thought he saw some one in the shadow on the terrace: was it Vanina?
Vanina came every night to press her cheek against the young carbonaro’s window-panes.
“If I speak to him,” she said to herself, “I am lost! No, I must not see him again!”
Having taken this resolution, she recalled, in spite of herself, the fondness which she had conceived for the young man when she so foolishly took him for a woman. And now, after so sweet an intimacy, she must forget him! In her more reasonable moments, Vanina was terrified at the change which had taken place in her thoughts. Since Missirilli had named himself, all the things she had been accustomed to think about were as if covered with a veil, and seemed very far away.
A week had not passed before Vanina, pale and trembling, entered the young carbonaro’s room with the surgeon. She came to tell him that the prince must be made to promise to let a servant take his place. She did not remain ten seconds; but some days afterwards she came back again with the surgeon, out of humanity. One night, though Missirilli was much better and Vanina had no longer the excuse of fearing for his life, she ventured to come alone. Nothing could exceed Missirilli’s happiness at seeing her, but he thought to conceal his love; above all, he did not wish to forget the dignity of a man. Vanina, who had come to his room covered with blushes and afraid she would have to listen to words of love, was disconcerted by the noble and devoted, but far from tender, friendliness with which he received her. She went away without his trying to detain her.