I looked at him hesitatingly, not yet knowing how far to go. But his look inspired me with courage, and I continued, with emotion:
“Tell me, in your turn, that you regret nothing, that my presence suffices, and I pledge you my word, Lorenzo, this hour will be the happiest of my life.”
Instead of replying directly, he knelt down beside the little divan where I was sitting, and I saw his eyes beaming with the expression that once used to flash from them for an instant, not uncertain and transitory as then, but calm, stable, and profound.
“Ginevra,” said he, “in assuring you to-day that my reason has been restored to me, that I have for ever recovered from my detestable aberration, that I again look upon you as I did when you first effaced every other image, that I love you as much, yes, a thousand times more than ever, this is not saying enough, this is not telling you what you would perhaps listen to far more gladly than all this.”
I opened my eyes and looked steadily towards him. He felt my soul was trying to read his, and he continued in a low, agitated tone:
“You have made me love in you what is better than yourself. Listen to me.... Long years of indifference had effaced the memory of divine things I had been taught in my childhood. Did you think they could ever be recalled? I had never felt the slightest desire. It is you, Ginevra, who caused their return. Can you realize it?”
O my God! this hour was too happy for earth! It left me only one wish more. It realized to the fullest extent all the cherished dreams of the past, and made me touch at last the summit (alas! always threatening and uncertain) of earthly happiness! No cloud has ever obscured the bright, blessed remembrance! No suffering, no trial, has ever checked the effusion of gratitude I still feel, and which will be eternal!
It will not be difficult to understand that, in this new state of things, our life speedily and sweetly resumed its course. Strange to say, this calm, simple life, exempt from splendor, luxury, and worldly éclat, was the precise realization of the secret desire I had always cherished in my soul, the signification of which had been revealed to me in that great day of grace which I may call that of my true birth!
It would, therefore, have been an absurdity to speak of sacrifice in the situation in which I now found myself. But Lorenzo did not yet see things in the same light.
“I acknowledge,” said he one day, after some weeks had passed by—“I acknowledge we lack nothing essential, that the waifs from our wreck even afford us a comfortable support, but I wish more than that for you, my Ginevra. I must work for the means of restoring all my folly has deprived you of. The public receives my productions with marked favor. They have all been sold at a fabulous price, except one which I will never part with. Let me alone, therefore, and I promise you the day shall arrive when I [pg 784] will place on your brow a diadem even more brilliant than the one you have lost.”