CHAPTER II. AUCTION_Juana

The foregoing narrative changed the intentions of the Italian captain;

no longer did he think of making a Marchesa di Montefiore of Juana di

Mancini. He recognized the blood of the Maranas in the glance the girl

had given from behind the blinds, in the trick she had just played to

satisfy her curiosity, and also in the parting look she had cast upon

him. The libertine wanted a virtuous woman for a wife.

The adventure was full of danger, but danger of a kind that never

daunts the least courageous man, for love and pleasure followed it. The

apprentice sleeping in the shop, the cook bivouacking in the kitchen,

Perez and his wife sleeping, no doubt, the wakeful sleep of the aged,

the echoing sonority of the old mansion, the close surveillance of the

girl in the day-time,--all these things were obstacles, and made success

a thing well-nigh impossible. But Montefiore had in his favor against

all impossibilities the blood of the Maranas which gushed in the heart

of that inquisitive girl, Italian by birth, Spanish in principles,

virgin indeed, but impatient to love. Passion, the girl, and Montefiore

were ready and able to defy the whole universe.

Montefiore, impelled as much by the instinct of a man of gallantry as

by those vague hopes which cannot be explained, and to which we give

the name of presentiments (a word of astonishing verbal accuracy),

Montefiore spent the first hours of the night at his window, endeavoring

to look below him to the secret apartment where, undoubtedly, the

merchant and his wife had hidden the love and joyfulness of their old

age. The ware-room of the “entresol” separated him from the rooms on the

ground-floor. The captain therefore could not have recourse to noises

significantly made from one floor to the other, an artificial language

which all lovers know well how to create. But chance, or it may have

been the young girl herself, came to his assistance. At the moment when

he stationed himself at his window, he saw, on the black wall of the

courtyard, a circle of light, in the centre of which the silhouette of

Juana was clearly defined; the consecutive movement of the arms, and the

attitude, gave evidence that she was arranging her hair for the night.

“Is she alone?” Montefiore asked himself; “could I, without danger,

lower a letter filled with coin and strike it against that circular

window in her hiding-place?”

At once he wrote a note, the note of a man exiled by his family to Elba,

the note of a degraded marquis now a mere captain of equipment. Then he

made a cord of whatever he could find that was capable of being turned

into string, filled the note with a few silver crowns, and lowered it in

the deepest silence to the centre of that spherical gleam.

“The shadows will show if her mother or the servant is with her,”

thought Montefiore. “If she is not alone, I can pull up the string at

once.”

But, after succeeding with infinite trouble in striking the glass, a

single form, the little figure of Juana, appeared upon the wall. The

young girl opened her window cautiously, saw the note, took it, and

stood before the window while she read it. In it, Montefiore had given

his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the

old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini--a

common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At Juana’s

age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround youth. A poet

of our day has said: “Woman succumbs only to her own nobility. The lover

pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the moment when he is most

beloved; the young girl, confident and proud, longs to make sacrifices

to prove her love, and knows the world and men too little to continue

calm in the midst of her rising emotions and repel with contempt the man

who accepts a life offered in expiation of a false reproach.”

Ever since the constitution of societies the young girl finds herself

torn by a struggle between the caution of prudent virtue and the evils

of wrong-doing. Often she loses a love, delightful in prospect, and the

first, if she resists; on the other hand, she loses a marriage if she

is imprudent. Casting a glance over the vicissitudes of social life

in Paris, it is impossible to doubt the necessity of religion; and

yet Paris is situated in the forty-eighth degree of latitude, while

Tarragona is in the forty-first. The old question of climates is still

useful to narrators to explain the sudden denouements, the imprudences,

or the resistances of love.

Montefiore kept his eyes fixed on the exquisite black profile projected

by the gleam upon the wall. Neither he nor Juana could see each other;

a troublesome cornice, vexatiously placed, deprived them of the mute

correspondence which may be established between a pair of lovers as they

bend to each other from their windows. Thus the mind and the attention

of the captain were concentrated on that luminous circle where, without

perhaps knowing it herself, the young girl would, he thought, innocently

reveal her thoughts by a series of gestures. But no! The singular

motions she proceeded to make gave not a particle of hope to the

expectant lover. Juana was amusing herself by cutting up his missive.

But virtue and innocence sometimes imitate the clever proceedings

inspired by jealousy to the Bartholos of comedy. Juana, without

pens, ink, or paper, was replying by snip of scissors. Presently she

refastened the note to the string; the officer drew it up, opened it,

and read by the light of his lamp one word, carefully cut out of the

paper: COME.

“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? For

the last few months I have nearly died of sadness. Yes, I would _rather_

die than stay longer in this house. Look at that embroidery; there is

not a stitch there which I did not set with dreadful thoughts. How many

times I have thought of escaping to fling myself into the sea! Why? I

don’t know why,--little childish troubles, but very keen, though they

are so silly. Often I have kissed my mother at night as one would kiss

a mother for the last time, saying in my heart: ‘To-morrow I will kill

myself.’ But I do not die. Suicides go to hell, you know, and I am so

afraid of hell that I resign myself to live, to get up in the morning

and go to bed at night, and work the same hours, and do the same things.

I am not so weary of it, but I suffer--And yet, my father and mother

adore me. Oh! I am bad, I am bad; I say so to my confessor.”

“Do you always live here alone, without amusement, without pleasures?”

“Oh! I have not always been like this. Till I was fifteen the festivals

of the church, the chants, the music gave me pleasure. I was happy,

feeling myself like the angels without sin and able to communicate every

week--I loved God then. But for the last three years, from day to day,

all things have changed. First, I wanted flowers here--and I have them,

lovely flowers! Then I wanted--but I want nothing now,” she added, after

a pause, smiling at Montefiore. “Have you not said that you would love

me always?”

“Yes, my Juana,” cried Montefiore, softly, taking her round the waist

and pressing her to his heart, “yes. But let me speak to you as you

speak to God. Are you not as beautiful as Mary in heaven? Listen. I

swear to you,” he continued, kissing her hair, “I swear to take that

forehead for my altar, to make you my idol, to lay at your feet all the

luxuries of the world. For you, my palace at Milan; for you my horses,

my jewels, the diamonds of my ancient family; for you, each day, fresh

jewels, a thousand pleasures, and all the joys of earth!”

“Yes,” she said reflectively, “I would like that; but I feel within my

soul that I would like better than all the world my husband. Mio caro

sposo!” she said, as if it were impossible to give in any other language

the infinite tenderness, the loving elegance with which the Italian

tongue and accent clothe those delightful words. Besides, Italian was

Juana’s maternal language.

“I should find,” she continued, with a glance at Montefiore in which

shone the purity of the cherubim, “I should find in _him_ my dear

religion, him and God--God and him. Is he to be you?” she said. “Yes,

surely it will be you,” she cried, after a pause. “Come, and see the

picture my father brought me from Italy.”

She took a candle, made a sign to Montefiore, and showed him at the foot

of her bed a Saint Michael overthrowing the demon.

“Look!” she said, “has he not your eyes? When I saw you from my window

in the street, our meeting seemed to me a sign from heaven. Every day

during my morning meditation, while waiting for my mother to call me to

prayer, I have so gazed at that picture, that angel, that I have ended

by thinking him my husband--oh! heavens, I speak to you as though you

were myself. I must seem crazy to you; but if you only knew how a poor

captive wants to tell the thoughts that choke her! When alone, I talk to

my flowers, to my tapestry; they can understand me better, I think, than

my father and mother, who are so grave.”

“Juana,” said Montefiore, taking her hands and kissing them with the

passion that gushed in his eyes, in his gestures, in the tones of his

voice, “speak to me as your husband, as yourself. I have suffered all

that you have suffered. Between us two few words are needed to make

us comprehend our past, but there will never be enough to express our

coming happiness. Lay your hand upon my heart. Feel how it beats. Let us

promise before God, who sees and hears us, to be faithful to each other

throughout our lives. Here, take my ring--and give me yours.”

“Give you my ring!” she said in terror.

“Why not?” asked Montefiore, uneasy at such artlessness.

“But our holy father the Pope has blessed it; it was put upon my finger

in childhood by a beautiful lady who took care of me, and who told me

never to part with it.”

“Juana, you cannot love me!”

“Ah!” she said, “here it is; take it. You, are you not another myself?”

She held out the ring with a trembling hand, holding it tightly as she

looked at Montefiore with a clear and penetrating eye that questioned

him. That ring! all of herself was in it; but she gave it to him.

“Oh, my Juana!” said Montefiore, again pressing her in his arms. “I

should be a monster indeed if I deceived you. I will love you forever.”

Juana was thoughtful. Montefiore, reflecting that in this first

interview he ought to venture upon nothing that might frighten a young

girl so ignorantly pure, so imprudent by virtue rather than from desire,

postponed all further action to the future, relying on his beauty, of

which he knew the power, and on this innocent ring-marriage, the hymen

of the heart, the lightest, yet the strongest of all ceremonies. For the

rest of that night, and throughout the next day, Juana’s imagination was

the accomplice of her passion.

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 imprudences 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.

“Tarragona! I must get to Tarragona before the town is taken!” she

cried. “Ten days to reach Tarragona!”

Then without caring for crown or court, she arrived in Tarragona,

furnished with an almost imperial safe-conduct; furnished too with gold

which enabled her to cross France with the velocity of a rocket.

“My daughter! my daughter!” cried the Marana.

At this voice, and the abrupt invasion of their solitude, the

prayer-book fell from the hands of the old couple.

“She is there,” replied the merchant, calmly, after a pause during which

he recovered from the emotion caused by the abrupt entrance, and the

look and voice of the mother. “She is there,” he repeated, pointing to

the door of the little chamber.

“Yes, but has any harm come to her; is she still--”

“Perfectly well,” said Dona Lagounia.

“O God! send me to hell if it so pleases thee!” cried the Marana,

dropping, exhausted and half dead, into a chair.

The flush in her cheeks, due to anxiety, paled suddenly; she had

strength to endure suffering, but none to bear this joy. Joy was more

violent in her soul than suffering, for it contained the echoes of her

pain and the agonies of its own emotion.

“But,” she said, “how have you kept her safe? Tarragona is taken.”

“Yes,” said Perez, “but since you see me living why do you ask that

question? Should I not have died before harm could have come to Juana?”

At that answer, the Marana seized the calloused hand of the old man, and

kissed it, wetting it with the tears that flowed from her eyes--she who

never wept! those tears were all she had most precious under heaven.

“My good Perez!” she said at last. “But have you had no soldiers

quartered in your house?”

“Only one,” replied the Spaniard. “Fortunately for us the most loyal

of men; a Spaniard by birth, but now an Italian who hates Bonaparte; a

married man. He is ill, and gets up late and goes to bed early.”

“An Italian! What is his name?”

“Montefiore.”

“Can it be the Marquis de Montefiore--”

“Yes, Senora, he himself.”

“Has he seen Juana?”

“No,” said Dona Lagounia.

“You are mistaken, wife,” said Perez. “The marquis must have seen her

for a moment, a short moment, it is true; but I think he looked at her

that evening she came in here during supper.”

“Ah, let me see my daughter!”

“Nothing easier,” said Perez; “she is now asleep. If she has left the

key in the lock we must waken her.”

As he rose to take the duplicate key of Juana’s door his eyes fell by

chance on the circular gleam of light upon the black wall of the inner

courtyard. Within that circle he saw the shadow of a group such as

Canova alone has attempted to render. The Spaniard turned back.

“I do not know,” he said to the Marana, “where to find the key.”

“You are very pale,” she said.

“And I will show you why,” he cried, seizing his dagger and rapping its

hilt violently on Juana’s door as he shouted,--

“Open! open! open! Juana!”

Juana did not open, for she needed time to conceal Montefiore. She knew

nothing of what was passing in the salon; the double portieres of thick

tapestry deadened all sounds.

“Madame, I lied to you in saying I could not find the key. Here it is,”

added Perez, taking it from a sideboard. “But it is useless. Juana’s key

is in the lock; her door is barricaded. We have been deceived, my wife!”

he added, turning to Dona Lagounia. “There is a man in Juana’s room.”

“Impossible! By my eternal salvation I say it is impossible!” said his

wife.

“Do not swear, Dona Lagounia. Our honor is dead, and this woman--”

He pointed to the Marana, who had risen and was standing motionless,

blasted by his words, “this woman has the right to despise us. She saved

our life, our fortune, and our honor, and we have saved nothing for her

but her money--Juana!” he cried again, “open, or I will burst in your

door.”

His voice, rising in violence, echoed through the garrets in the roof.

He was cold and calm. The life of Montefiore was in his hands; he would

wash away his remorse in the blood of that Italian.

“Out, out, out! out, all of you!” cried the Marana, springing like

a tigress on the dagger, which she wrenched from the hand of the

astonished Perez. “Out, Perez,” she continued more calmly, “out, you and

your wife and servants! There will be murder here. You might be shot by

the French. Have nothing to do with this; it is my affair, mine only.

Between my daughter and me there is none but God. As for the man, he

belongs to _me_. The whole earth could not tear him from my grasp. Go,

go! I forgive you. I see plainly that the girl is a Marana. You, your

religion, your virtue, were too weak to fight against my blood.”

She gave a dreadful sigh, turning her dry eyes on them. She had lost

all, but she knew how to suffer,--a true courtesan.

The door opened. The Marana forgot all else, and Perez, making a sign to

his wife, remained at his post. With his old invincible Spanish honor he

was determined to share the vengeance of the betrayed mother. Juana, all

in white, and softly lighted by the wax candles, was standing calmly in

the centre of her chamber.

“What do you want with me?” she said.

The Marana could not repress a passing shudder.

“Perez,” she asked, “has this room another issue?”

Perez made a negative gesture; confiding in that gesture, the mother

entered the room.

“Juana,” she said, “I am your mother, your judge; you have placed

yourself in the only situation in which I could reveal myself to you.

You have come down to me, you, whom I thought in heaven. Ah! you have

fallen low indeed. You have a lover in this room.”

“Madame, there is and can be no one but my husband,” answered the girl.

“I am the Marquise de Montefiore.”

“Then there are two,” said Perez, in a grave voice. “He told me he was

married.”

“Montefiore, my love!” cried the girl, tearing aside the curtain and

revealing the officer. “Come! they are slandering you.”

The Italian appeared, pale and speechless; he saw the dagger in the

Marana’s hand, and he knew her well. With one bound he sprang from the

room, crying out in a thundering voice,--

“Help! help! they are murdering a Frenchman. Soldiers of the 6th of the

line, rush for Captain Diard! Help, help!”

Perez had gripped the man and was trying to gag him with his large hand,

but the Marana stopped him, saying,--

“Bind him fast, but let him shout. Open the doors, leave them open,

and go, go, as I told you; go, all of you.--As for you,” she said,

addressing Montefiore, “shout, call for help if you choose; by the

time your soldiers get here this blade will be in your heart. Are you

married? Answer.”

Montefiore, who had fallen on the threshold of the door, scarcely a step

from Juana, saw nothing but the blade of the dagger, the gleam of which

blinded him.

“Has he deceived me?” said Juana, slowly. “He told me he was free.”

“He told me that he was married,” repeated Perez, in his solemn voice.

“Holy Virgin!” murmured Dona Lagounia.

“Answer, soul of corruption,” said the Marana, in a low voice, bending

to the ear of the marquis.

“Your daughter--” began Montefiore.

“The daughter that was mine is dead or dying,” interrupted the Marana.

“I have no daughter; do not utter that word. Answer, are you married?”

“No, madame,” said Montefiore, at last, striving to gain time, “I desire

to marry your daughter.”

“My noble Montefiore!” said Juana, drawing a deep breath.

“Then why did you attempt to fly and cry for help?” asked Perez.

Terrible, revealing light!

Juana said nothing, but she wrung her hands and went to her arm-chair

and sat down.

At that moment a tumult rose in the street which was plainly heard in

the silence of the room. A soldier of the 6th, hearing Montefiore’s cry

for help, had summoned Diard. The quartermaster, who was fortunately in

his bivouac, came, accompanied by friends.

“Why did I fly?” said Montefiore, hearing the voice of his friend.

“Because I told you the truth; I am married--Diard! Diard!” he shouted

in a piercing voice.

But, at a word from Perez, the apprentice closed and bolted the doors,

so that the soldiers were delayed by battering them in. Before they

could enter, the Marana had time to strike her dagger into the guilty

man; but anger hindered her aim, the blade slipped upon the Italian’s

epaulet, though she struck her blow with such force that he fell at the

very feet of Juana, who took no notice of him. The Marana sprang upon

him, and this time, resolved not to miss her prey, she caught him by the

throat.

“I am free and I will marry her! I swear it, by God, by my mother, by

all there is most sacred in the world; I am a bachelor; I will marry

her, on my honor!”

And he bit the arm of the courtesan.

“Mother,” said Juana, “kill him. He is so base that I will not have him

for my husband, were he ten times as beautiful.”

“Ah! I recognize my daughter!” cried the mother.

“What is all this?” demanded the quartermaster, entering the room.

“They are murdering me,” cried Montefiore, “on account of this girl; she

says I am her lover. She inveigled me into a trap, and they are forcing

me to marry her--”

“And you reject her?” cried Diard, struck with the splendid beauty which

contempt, hatred, and indignation had given to the girl, already so

beautiful. “Then you are hard to please. If she wants a husband I am

ready to marry her. Put up your weapons; there is no trouble here.”

The Marana pulled the Italian to the side of her daughter’s bed and said

to him, in a low voice,--

“If I spare you, give thanks for the rest of your life; but, remember

this, if your tongue ever injures my daughter you will see me again.

Go!--How much ‘dot’ do you give her?” she continued, going up to Perez.

“She has two hundred thousand gold piastres,” replied the Spaniard.

“And that is not all, monsieur,” said the Marana, turning to Diard. “Who

are you?--Go!” she repeated to Montefiore.

The marquis, hearing this statement of gold piastres, came forward once

more, saying,--

“I am really free--”

A glance from Juana silenced him.

“You are really free to go,” she said.

And he went immediately.

“Alas! monsieur,” said the girl, turning to Diard, “I thank you with

admiration. But my husband is in heaven. To-morrow I shall enter a

convent--”

“Juana, my Juana, hush!” cried the mother, clasping her in her arms.

Then she whispered in the girl’s ear. “You _must_ have another husband.”

Juana turned pale. She freed herself from her mother and sat down once