These thoughts, and many others of a similar nature, passed through my mind while the boat was rapidly cleaving the waves, and little by little the last outline of the coast of Italy faded away and finally disappeared from my eyes for ever.
Night came on, the stars appeared, but I remained in the place where I was, without being able to make up my mind to leave it.
This solitude of the sea—more profound than any other—speaks to the soul a language peculiar to itself. I listened to it with undivided attention, blessing God for having inclined me to hear his voice, to give heed to no other during the period of inaction and repose which separated the portion of my life just closed from that which was about to commence under new and unknown circumstances.
I did not stop at Marseilles, for I was impatient to arrive at my journey's end. And yet, in spite of the summons I was now obeying, I was not without anxiety as to the reception I should meet with. I knew the mobility of Lorenzo's feelings, and that the letter I had so recently received from him was not a sure guarantee of the disposition in which I should find him. In fact, when I met him on my arrival at the station, I did not at first know what to think. He was pale, agitated, and gloomy, and could scarcely hide the suffering his face expressed much more clearly than joy at seeing me again. I felt the arm tremble on which I was leaning, and I remained silent, confounded, and anxious. He hurried me through the crowd, placed me in a carriage, made Ottavia take a seat beside me, then closed the door with an air of constraint, saying he wished to arrive before me.
At first I was astonished at finding myself so suddenly separated from him, after barely seeing him for a moment. But I saw, by the embarrassment and painful agitation he manifested, what was passing in his mind, and was extremely affected. Poor Lorenzo! it was not in this way he had once led his young bride beneath his roof. This was not the future he then took pleasure in depicting, or what he had promised. The immense change of fortune he had undergone was now for the first time to be realized by the wife he had outraged, and from whom he did not dare expect an affection which would overlook all and render every sacrifice light. I felt he regretted now that he had consented to my coming.
After a long drive we at last came to the end of a street at the extremity of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where we entered a small court, and the carriage stopped before a door of very unpretending appearance.
But the house to which it gave access, covered on the outside with climbing plants that concealed the reddish tint of the walls, had a picturesque appearance seldom found in any house in Paris, large or small. Lorenzo, with his artistic eye, had discovered it, and understood also how it should be arranged interiorly. Consequently, when he ushered me into a salon opening into a little parterre filled with flowers, beyond which rose the trees of an adjacent garden, which made it seem like some rural solitude; when he took me all over the ground-floor, where everything was simple, but nothing vulgar; when on all sides I found evidences both of his taste and his solicitude for me; above all, when I saw in his cabinet and studio all the indications that he had resumed his habits of assiduous labor and serious study, so great a joy filled my heart and beamed from my eyes that he could no longer feel any doubt, and I saw the cloud that veiled his brow totally disappear.
“Is it possible?... Is it true?” said he. “You are satisfied, Ginevra? And I can welcome your presence without remorse?”
I was affected to tears.
“I assure you,” said I, with a sincerity of accent that could not be mistaken, “this so-called great catastrophe has only taken away the things I did not care for: it gives me here all I love, and nearly everything I desire.”