“The fly-catcher’s daughter came in search of me. She saw you stagger, and hearing you cry aloud, fancied you were in need of assistance.”
The Count relapsed into a fit of musing. It seemed to occur to him, for the first time, that a young girl occasionally inhabited that part of the prison.
“The resemblance I fancied I could discover between the stranger and Picciola, is doubtless a new delusion!” said he to himself. And he now recalled to mind Teresa’s interest in his favour, mentioned to him by the venerable Girardi. The young Piedmontese had compassionated his condition during his illness. To her he is indebted for the possession of his microscope. His heart becomes suddenly touched with gratitude, and in the first effusion, a sudden remark seems to sever the double image, the young girl of his dreams, from the young girl of his waking hours; “Girardi’s daughter wore no flower in her hair.”
That moment, but not without hesitation, not without self-reproach, he plucked with a trembling hand from his plant a small branch covered with blossoms.
“Formerly,” thought Charney, “what sums of money did I lavish to adorn, with gold and gems, brows devoted to perjury and shame! upon how many abandoned women and heartless men did I throw away my fortune, without caring more for them than for the feelings of my own bosom, which, at the same moment, I placed in the dust under their feet! Oh, if a gift derives its value from the regard in which it is held by the donor, never was a richer token offered by man to woman, my Picciola, than these flowers which I borrow from thy precious branches to bestow on the daughter of Girardi!”
Then, placing the blossomed bough in the hands of the jailer, “Present these in my name to the daughter of my venerable neighbour, good Ludovico!” said he. “Thank her for the generous interest she vouchsafes me; and tell her that the Count de Charney, poor, and a prisoner, has nothing to offer her more worthy her acceptance.”
Ludovico received the token with an air of stupefaction. He had begun to enter so completely into the passion of the captive for his plant, that he could not conjecture by what services the daughter of the fly-catcher had merited so distinguished a mark of munificence.
“No matter! Capo di San Pasquali!” exclaimed Ludovico, as he passed the postern. “They have long admired my god-daughter at a distance. Let us see what they will say to the brightness of her complexion, and sweetness of her breath, on a nearer acquaintance, Piccioletta mia, andiamo!”
