"Come!"he said to himself;"but what of poison?or the dagger or carbine of Perez?And that apprentice not yet asleep,perhaps,in the shop?and the servant in her hammock?Besides,this old house echoes the slightest sound;I can hear old Perez snoring even here.Come,indeed!She can have nothing more to lose."Bitter reflection!rakes alone are logical and will punish a woman for devotion.Man created Satan and Lovelace;but a virgin is an angel on whom he can bestow naught but his own vices.She is so grand,so beautiful,that he cannot magnify or embellish her;he has only the fatal power to blast her and drag her down into his own mire.
Montefiore waited for a later and more somnolent hour of the night;then,in spite of his reflections,he descended the stairs without boots,armed with his pistols,moving step by step,stopping to question the silence,putting forth his hands,measuring the stairs,peering into the darkness,and ready at the slightest incident to fly back into his room.The Italian had put on his handsomest uniform;he had perfumed his black hair,and now shone with the particular brilliancy which dress and toilet bestow upon natural beauty.Under such circumstances most men are as feminine as a woman.
The marquis arrived without hindrance before the secret door of the room in which the girl was hidden,a sort of cell made in the angle of the house and belonging exclusively to Juana,who had remained there hidden during the day from every eye while the siege lasted.Up to the present time she had slept in the room of her adopted mother,but the limited space in the garret where the merchant and his wife had gone to make room for the officer who was billeted upon them,did not allow of her going with them.Dona Lagounia had therefore left the young girl to the guardianship of lock and key,under the protection of religious ideas,all the more efficacious because they were partly superstitious,and also under the shield of a native pride and sensitive modesty which made the young Mancini in sort an exception among her sex.Juana possessed in an equal degree the most attaching virtues and the most passionate impulses;she had needed the modesty and sanctity of this monotonous life to calm and cool the tumultuous blood of the Maranas which bounded in her heart,the desires of which her adopted mother told her were an instigation of the devil.
A faint ray of light traced along the sill of the secret door guided Montefiore to the place;he scratched the panel softly and Juana opened to him.Montefiore entered,palpitating,but he recognized in the expression of the girl's face complete ignorance of her peril,a sort of naive curiosity,and an innocent admiration.He stopped short,arrested for a moment by the sacredness of the picture which met his eyes.
He saw before him a tapestry on the walls with a gray ground sprinkled with violets,a little coffer of ebony,an antique mirror,an immense and very old arm chair also in ebony and covered with tapestry,a table with twisted legs,a pretty carpet on the floor,near the table a single chair;and that was all.On the table,however,were flowers and embroidery;in a recess at the farther end of the room was the narrow little bed where Juana dreamed.Above the bed were three pictures;and near the pillow a crucifix,with a holy water basin and a prayer,printed in letters of gold and framed.Flowers exhaled their perfume faintly;the candles cast a tender light;all was calm and pure and sacred.The dreamy thoughts of Juana,but above all Juana herself,had communicated to all things her own peculiar charm;her soul appeared to shine there,like the pearl in its matrix.Juana,dressed in white,beautiful with naught but her own beauty,laying down her rosary to answer love,might have inspired respect,even in a Montefiore,if the silence,if the night,if Juana herself had not seemed so amorous.Montefiore stood still,intoxicated with an unknown happiness,possibly that of Satan beholding heaven through a rift of the clouds which form its enclosure.
"As soon as I saw you,"he said in pure Tuscan,and in the modest tone of voice so peculiarly Italian,"I loved you.My soul and my life are now in you,and in you they will be forever,if you will have it so."Juana listened,inhaling from the atmosphere the sound of these words which the accents of love made magnificent.
"Poor child!how have you breathed so long the air of this dismal house without dying of it?You,made to reign in the world,to inhabit the palace of a prince,to live in the midst of fetes,to feel the joys which love bestows,to see the world at your feet,to efface all other beauty by your own which can have no rival--you,to live here,solitary,with those two shopkeepers!"Adroit question!He wished to know if Juana had a lover.
"True,"she replied."But who can have told you my secret thoughts?
