Mario, Stella, and Ottavia were the sole confidants of my secret, and they kept it faithfully. Lorenzo had the less reason for suspecting I had been to the ball when, returning home at six o'clock in the morning, he learned I had had a violent attack of fever in the night, and was not able to rise. There was no deception in this. It was not a mere pretext for keeping my chamber, but the too natural consequence of the terrible excitement of the night I had passed.
Lorenzo came several times to know how I was, and manifested more apparent affection than usual; and yet once or twice, though perhaps my imagination deceived me, I thought I saw something like embarrassment or uneasiness in his face. I was, however, too ill all the morning to observe him closely or make any reply to what he said.
Towards evening I felt better, and, though still weak, I got up. Lorenzo came to see if anything serious was likely to result from my indisposition, and, being reassured on this point, he went out as usual, leaving me alone with Stella, who had spent part of the day at my bedside, though I had not been able to talk with her any more than with him. Her face was as grave that day as it was usually smiling. Stella's cheerfulness resulted from her complete lack of egotism. She regarded the happiness of others as a treasure from which she took all she needed for herself; and was happy, therefore, through sympathy. It was, so to speak, a reflected happiness. Admirable disposition! Incapable of exacting anything in view of her own lot, or of envying that of others, she was a delightful friend in times of prosperity, and, at the same time, a devoted adherent in misfortune, and the sweet, compassionate confidant [pg 308] of others' sorrows. My disappearance the evening before, the condition in which she found me in the morning, the incoherent words I uttered, prepared her for something serious, and she knew beforehand I, of all people in the world, would not hesitate to tell her the truth. In fact, as soon as we were left alone in a small sitting-room next my chamber, I gave her for the first time a full account of all that had taken place at Paris, as well as the night before. She listened without interrupting me, and, after I ended, remained silent for some time.
“This is indeed a good lesson for me,” said she at length. “I am cured for life, I hope, of a folly like that I committed last night.”
“What folly do you allude to?”
“Why, that of coming here and persuading you to go to a place where you learned what you might for ever have remained ignorant of.”
“And continue to be taken in, deceived, and blinded, to live in an atmosphere of deception, hypocrisy, and lies, to love what no longer merits affection? No, Stella, no; do not regret that, thanks to you, it is no longer the case. Were I to suffer even a thousand times more, were I to die of anguish, as I thought I should on the spot when I saw that woman pass by, I should be glad the veil had been torn from my eyes. I can no longer be happy, it is true. My happiness is ruined beyond repair, but I love truth better than happiness.”
“And do you think,” said Stella after a fresh pause, “that you can never forgive Lorenzo?”
“He must, at least, desire it, as you will acknowledge, and this is precisely what will never happen.”
“Why not?”