Some days after, when she returned, the same conduct, the same assurances of respectful devotion and eternal gratitude. So far from having to put a curb on the young carbonaro’s transports, Vanina asked herself if she alone was in love. This young girl, till then so proud, bitterly felt the extent of her folly. She affected gaiety, even coldness, came less often, but could not bring herself to cease seeing the young invalid.
Missirilli, burning with love, but remembering his obscure birth and his duty towards himself, had vowed never to descend to talking of love unless Vanina remained a week without seeing him. The young princess’s pride disputed every foot of the way.
“Well,” she said to herself at last, “if I see him, it is on my own account, it is for my amusement, and I will never avow the interest with which he inspires me.”
She paid long visits to Missirilli, who talked with her as he might have done if twenty people had been present. One night, after having spent the whole day in detesting him and promising herself to be even colder and severer than usual to him, she told him that she loved him. Soon she had nothing left to refuse him.
Though her folly was great, it must be owned that Vanina was perfectly happy. Missirilli had no more thought of what he considered due to his dignity as a man; he loved as they love for the first time at nineteen and in Italy. He had all the scruples of passionate love, even to the extent of acknowledging to the proud young princess the policy which he had employed to make her fall in love with him. He was astonished at the excess of his happiness. Four months passed only too quickly. One day the surgeon gave the invalid his liberty. “But what am I to do?” thought Missirilli. “Am I to remain in hiding under the roof of one of the handsomest women in Rome? And the vile tyrants who kept me thirteen months in prison without letting me see the light of day will think they have broken my spirit! Italy, thou art unfortunate indeed, if thy children abandon thee for so little!”
Vanina never doubted that Pietro’s greatest happiness would be to remain attached to her for ever; he seemed only too happy; but a saying of General Bonaparte rankled in the young man’s soul and influenced all his conduct towards women. In 1796, when General Bonaparte was leaving Brescia, the magistrates, who accompanied him to the gate of the town, said to him that the Brescians loved liberty more than all other Italians.
“Yes,” he answered, “they love to talk about it to their mistresses.”
Missirilli said to Vanina with some constraint:
“As soon as it is night, I must go out.”
“Take good care to be in the palace again before daybreak; I’ll wait for you.”