No matter: of his own attachment, at least, he is certain. He not only loves Teresa, but has sworn within his heart of hearts to love her through life and death; substituting for an ideal image, henceforward superfluous, one of the most charming realities of human nature.
But the attachment of which he is thus conscious is a secret to be preserved in the inmost archives of his soul: it would be a sin, a crime, to invoke the participation of Teresa in his passion. What right has he to imbitter the happy prospects of her life? Are they not destined to live apart from each other? she, free, happy, in the midst of a world which she embellishes, and where she will doubtless soon confer happiness on another in the bosom of domestic life; while he, in his solitary prison, must consecrate himself to eternal solitude and eternal regrets for his momentary happiness.
No! his passion shall be sedulously concealed. He will assume towards Teresa Girardi the demeanour of a person wholly indifferent, or satisfy himself with the calm demonstrations of a prudent and equable friendship. It would be too deep a misfortune for him—for both—were he to succeed in engaging her affections.
Full of these fine projects for the future, the first sounds that meet his ear on the cessation of his reverie were the following sentences interchanged between Teresa and her father, the former of whom was exerting all her eloquence to persuade the old man that the moment of his liberation was at hand; while Girardi persisted in expressing a conviction that the remainder of the year would expire without producing any material change in his destinies. “I know the dilatoriness of public functionaries,” said he; “I know the vacillations of government. So little suffices as a pretext for the suspension of justice, and the cooling of a great man’s mercy!”
“If such is your opinion,” cried Teresa, “I will return to-morrow to Turin, to hasten the fulfilment of their promises.”
“What need of so much haste?” demanded the father.
“How, dear father!” she replied, “is it possible that you prefer your mean and narrow chamber, and this wretched court, to your beautiful villa and gardens on the Collina?”
This seeming anxiety on the part of Teresa to leave Fenestrella ought to have convinced Charney that he was beloved, and that the danger that he dreaded for the object of his romantic attachment was already consummated. But the part he had intended to play was now wholly frustrated. Instead of affecting indifference, tranquillity, or even the reserve of a prudent friendship, he manifested only the petulance of a lover. Teresa, however, remained apparently unconscious of his fit of perversity; and was not deterred by his resentment from repeating, that if the decree of her father’s liberation should be again delayed, it was her duty to set off for Turin, and renew her solicitations to General Menon; nay, even for Paris, for a personal application to the Emperor. Usually so reserved and mild, the fair Piedmontese seemed excited on the present occasion to unusual vivacity.
“I scarcely understand you this morning,” said her father, amazed to observe the gaiety of her deportment in presence of the poor prisoner whom they were about to abandon to his misfortunes; and if her father found something to regret in her demeanour, how much rather the grieved and disappointed Charney!
The same reflections which had perplexed his mind the preceding night had, in fact, been passing also through the mind of Teresa. She had discovered, not the arrival of Love in her bosom, but that it had long resided there an unsuspected inmate: and though, like Charney, she would willingly have accepted, as regarded her own happiness, the perils and privations with which it was accompanied, like Charney she was reluctant that all these should be inflicted upon another. The delight of loving, the dread of being loved, threw her into a state of mental contradiction, and produced the garrulity in which she sought refuge from herself.