On this first evening Montefiore forced himself to be as respectful as he was tender.With that intention,in the interests of his passion and the desires with which Juana inspired him,he was caressing and unctuous in language;he launched the young creature into plans for a new existence,described to her the world under glowing colors,talked to her of household details always attractive to the mind of girls,giving her a sense of the rights and realities of love.Then,having agreed upon the hour for their future nocturnal interviews,he left her happy,but changed;the pure and pious Juana existed no longer;in the last glance she gave him,in the pretty movement by which she brought her forehead to his lips,there was already more of passion than a girl should feel.Solitude,weariness of employments contrary to her nature had brought this about.To make the daughter of the Maranas truly virtuous,she ought to have been habituated,little by little,to the world,or else to have been wholly withdrawn from it.
"The day,to-morrow,will seem very long to me,"she said,receiving his kisses on her forehead."But stay in the salon,and speak loud,that I may hear your voice;it fills my soul."Montefiore,clever enough to imagine the girl's life,was all the more satisfied with himself for restraining his desires because he saw that it would lead to his greater contentment.He returned to his room without accident.
Ten days went by without any event occurring to trouble the peace and solitude of the house.Montefiore employed his Italian cajolery on old Perez,on Dona Lagounia,on the apprentice,even on the cook,and they all liked him;but,in spite of the confidence he now inspired in them,he never asked to see Juana,or to have the door of her mysterious hiding-place opened to him.The young girl,hungry to see her lover,implored him to do so;but he always refused her from an instinct of prudence.Besides,he had used his best powers and fascinations to lull the suspicions of the old couple,and had now accustomed them to see him,a soldier,stay in bed till midday on pretence that he was ill.Thus the lovers lived only in the night-time,when the rest of the household were asleep.If Montefiore had not been one of those libertines whom the habit of gallantry enables to retain their self-possession under all circumstances,he might have been lost a dozen times during those ten days.A young lover,in the simplicity of a first love,would have committed the enchanting imprudence which are so difficult to resist.But he did resist even Juana herself,Juana pouting,Juana making her long hair a chain which she wound about his neck when caution told him he must go.
The most suspicious of guardians would however have been puzzled to detect the secret of their nightly meetings.It is to be supposed that,sure of success,the Italian marquis gave himself the ineffable pleasures of a slow seduction,step by step,leading gradually to the fire which should end the affair in a conflagration.On the eleventh day,at the dinner-table,he thought it wise to inform old Perez,under seal of secrecy,that the reason of his separation from his family was an ill-assorted marriage.This false revelation was an infamous thing in view of the nocturnal drama which was being played under that roof.Montefiore,an experienced rake,was preparing for the finale of that drama which he foresaw and enjoyed as an artist who loves his art.He expected to leave before long,and without regret,the house and his love.It would happen,he thought,in this way:
Juana,after waiting for him in vain for several nights,would risk her life,perhaps,in asking Perez what had become of his guest;and Perez would reply,not aware of the importance of his answer,--"The Marquis de Montefiore is reconciled to his family,who consent to receive his wife;he has gone to Italy to present her to them."And Juana?--The marquis never asked himself what would become of Juana;but he had studied her character,its nobility,candor,and strength,and he knew he might be sure of her silence.
He obtained a mission from one of the generals.Three days later,on the night preceding his intended departure,Montefiore,instead of returning to his own room after dinner,contrived to enter unseen that of Juana,to make that farewell night the longer.Juana,true Spaniard and true Italian,was enchanted with such boldness;it argued ardor!
For herself she did not fear discovery.To find in the pure love of marriage the excitements of intrigue,to hide her husband behind the curtains of her bed,and say to her adopted father and mother,in case of detection:"I am the Marquise de Montefiore!"--was to an ignorant and romantic young girl,who for three years past had dreamed of love without dreaming of its dangers,delightful.The door closed on this last evening upon her folly,her happiness,like a veil,which it is useless here to raise.
It was nine o'clock;the merchant and his wife were reading their evening prayers;suddenly the noise of a carriage drawn by several horses resounded in the street;loud and hasty raps echoed from the shop where the servant hurried to open the door,and into that venerable salon rushed a woman,magnificently dressed in spite of the mud upon the wheels of her travelling-carriage,which had just crossed Italy,France,and Spain.It was,of course,the Marana,--the Marana who,in spite of her thirty-six years,was still in all the glory of her ravishing beauty;the Marana who,being at that time the mistress of a king,had left Naples,the fetes,the skies of Naples,the climax of her life of luxury,on hearing from her royal lover of the events in Spain and the siege of Tarragona.
