"Yes! but I'd done so a hundred times before," retorted Mrs. Goffoni; "and I thought you knew women better than to believe such things."
"Nor should I have been such a booby as to do so," remarked Mr. G., "if you hadn't written me that horrid letter."
"Letter!" cried Carlotta. "Oh! I see it all now! I do! That letter was intended for the Marchese di Castellinaria, and you—you—wretched—stupid man—you thought it was meant for yourself."
"Intended for that cursed Marchese!" shouted Signor Goffoni. "Then why the deuce did you leave the house, and tell the maid to give it to me?"
"Oh! I thought it would make you so happy and comfortable!" exclaimed his miserable little wife. "I thought it would please you so on your return home to find how I'd answered the fellow's impertinent note."
"Then! oh dear! oh dear!" replied Goffoni; "why couldn't you have shown it to me yourself?"
"Why, because you were so cruel, and so put out about that note in the morning, that I didn't like to see you again until I had made you acquainted with what I had done. So I left the copy for you to read, while I went out to post the original."
Goffoni now saw through the mistake as clearly as his better half; and again he railed at the limited extent of his intellectual faculties, applying to himself the same complimentary terms as he had previously used. And then he kissed his Carlotta, and called her his own blessed angel of a wife, and himself her own cursed fool of a husband; and gave vent to his feelings—which were now a kind of a piebald of grief and joy—in a manner that makes a bankrupt of description, and forces history to take the benefit of the insolvent act. For he plainly perceived that, without any real cause, he had taken poison and a highway robbery upon himself; and that he would be forced to separate from his Carlotta at a time when he had no desire to leave her, and by a species of divorce for which he had now lost all relish.
The sorry Signor then recited to his wondering little wife the tale which we have before told the reader (only not quite so cleverly as ourselves); and on showing her the cloak that he had received from the stranger, his distress of mind was in no way relieved by hearing his Carlotta—who could swear to the clasp and collar—peremptorily pronounce it to be the property of the very Marchese from whom he dated all his troubles. So that he now saw, in addition to his miseries, not only that he had saved the life of him who was the primary cause of all his jealousy, but that he was about to die outright for the crimes of the very man whose peccadilloes had nearly put an end to his existence by poison before.
Yes! facetious reader, it was even so! The Signora's gallant Marchese was none other than the Signor's ungallant stranger, a gentleman better known in the romance of highway robbery as Virtuoso, the brigand! and who, in the glowing language of one of the many instructive novels, of which he afterwards became the hero, "was no vulgar Freebooter." No! his was a spirit too proud to beg, too chivalrous to work, and too generous to trade. If he took from the rich he freely gave to the poor; and if, in the pursuance of his romantic vocation, he was compelled, in self-defence, to sacrifice the life of some obstinate victim, he ever after endeavoured to remove the stain of the blood from his soul by the scouring drops of contrition. Nor was his love of the poor greater than his love of—Woman! To her his lustrous eye and soft guitar-like voice, coupled with the perils of his adventurous life, had ever a magical charm. He was not merely the Freebooter of Lucre, but—the Brigand of the Heart! And if his passion was of too fickle and roving a nature, at least in extenuation it may be pleaded that he never parted from the object of his love without first abstracting from her some article of jewellery or plate, by which to treasure up her remembrance.