The Contessina’s disposition was too different from her mother’s for the
mother to comprehend that heart, the more contracted in proportion as it
was touched, while emotion was synonymous with expansion in the opulent
and impulsive Venetian. That evening she had not even observed Alba’s
dreaminess, Dorsenne once gone, and it required that Hafner should
call her attention to it. To the scheming Baron, if the novelist
was attentive to the young girl it was certainly with the object of
capturing a considerable dowry. Julien’s income of twenty-five thousand
francs meant independence. The two hundred and fifty thousand francs
which Alba would have at her mother’s death was a very large fortune.
So Hafner thought he would deserve the name of “old friend,” by taking
Madame Steno aside and saying to her:
“Do you not think Alba has been a little strange for several days!”
“She has always been so,” replied the Countess. “Young people are like
that nowadays; there is no more youth.”
“Do you not think,” continued the Baron, “that perhaps there is another
cause for that sadness--some interest in some one, for example?”
“Alba?” exclaimed the mother. “For whom?”
“For Dorsenne,” returned Hafner, lowering his voice; “he just left five
minutes ago, and you see she is no longer interested in anything nor in
any one.”
“Ah, I should be very much pleased,” said Madame Steno, laughing. “He is
a handsome fellow; he has talent, fortune. He is the grand-nephew of a
hero, which is equivalent to nobility, in my opinion. But Alba has
no thought of it, I assure you. She would have told me; she tells me
everything. We are two friends, almost two comrades, and she knows
I shall leave her perfectly free to choose.... No, my old friend, I
understand my daughter. Neither Dorsenne nor any one else interests her,
unfortunately. I sometimes fear she will go into a decline, like her
cousin Andryana Navagero, whom she resembles.... But I must cheer her
up. It will not take long.”
“A Dorsenne for a son-in-law!” said Hafner to himself, as he watched the
Countess walk toward Alba through the scattered groups of her guests,
and he shook his head, turning his eyes with satisfaction upon his
future son-in-law. “That is what comes of not watching one’s children
closely. One fancies one understands them until some folly opens one’s
eyes!... And, it is too late!... Well, I have warned her, and it is no
affair of mine!”
In spite of Fanny’s observed and increasing vexation Ardea amused
himself by relating to her anecdotes, more or less true, of the
goings-on in the Vatican. He thus attempted to abate a Catholic
enthusiasm at which he was already offended. His sense of the ridiculous
and that of his social interest made him perceive how absurd it would be
to go into clerical society after having taken for a wife a millionaire
converted the day before. To be just, it must be added that the
Countess’s dry champagne was not altogether irresponsible for the
persistency with which he teased his betrothed. It was not the first
time he had indulged in the semi-intoxication which had been one of the
sins of his youth, a sin less rare in the southern climates than the
modesty of the North imagines.
“You come opportunely, Contessina,” said he, when Mademoiselle Steno had
seated herself upon the couch beside them. “Your friend is scandalized
by a little story I have just told her.... The one of the noble guard
who used the telephone of the Vatican this winter to appoint rendezvous
with Guilia Rezzonico without awakening the jealousy of Ugolino.... But
it is nothing. I have almost quarrelled with Fanny for having revealed
to her that the Holy Father repeated his benediction in Chapel Sixtine,
with a singing master, like a prima donna....”
“I have already told you that I do not like those jests,” said Fanny,
with visible irritation, which her patience, however, governed. “If you
desire to continue them, I will leave you to converse with Alba.”
“Since you see that you annoy her,” said the latter to the Prince,
“change the subject.”
“Ah, Contessina,” replied Peppino, shaking his head, “you support
her already. What will it be later? Well, I apologize for my innocent
epigrams on His Holiness in his dressing-gown. And,” he continued,
laughing, “it is a pity, for I have still two or three entertaining
stories, notably one about a coffer filled with gold pieces, which a
faithful bequeathed to the Pope. And that poor, dear man was about to
count them when the coffer slipped from his hand, and there was the
entire treasure on the floor, and the Pope and a cardinal on all fours
were scrambling for the napoleons, when a servant entered.... Tableau!
....I assure you that good Pius IX would be the first to laugh with us
at all the Vatican jokes. He is not so much ‘alla mano’. But he is a
holy man just the same. Do not think I do not render him justice. Only,
the holy man is a man, and a good old man. That is what you do not wish
to see.”
“Where are you going?” said Alba to Fanny, who had risen as she had
threatened to do.
“To talk with my father, to whom I have several words to say.”
“I warned you to change the subject,” said Alba, when she and the Prince
were alone. Ardea, somewhat abashed, shrugged his shoulders and laughed:
“You will confess that the situation is quite piquant, little
Countess.... You will see she will forbid me to go to the Quirinal....
Only one thing will be lacking, and it is that Papa Hafner should
discover religious scruples which would prevent him from greeting the
King.... But Fanny must be appeased!”
“My God!” said Alba to herself, seeing the young man rise in his turn.
“I believe he is intoxicated. What a pity!”
As have almost all revolutions of that order, the work of Christianity,
accomplished for years, in Fanny had for its principle an example.
The death of a friend, the sublime death of a true believer, ended by
determining her faith. She saw the dying woman receive the sacrament,
and the ineffable joy of the benediction upon the face of the sufferer
of twenty lighted up by ecstasy. She heard her say, with a smile of
conviction:
“I go to ask you of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
How could she have resisted such a cry and such a sight?
The very day after that death she asked of her father permission to be
baptized, which request drew from the Baron a reply too significant not
to be repeated here:
“Undoubtedly,” had replied the surprising man, who instead of a heart,
had a Bourse list on which all was tariffed, even God, “undoubtedly I
am touched, very deeply touched, and very happy to see that religious
matters preoccupy you to such a degree. To the people it is a necessary
curb, and to us it accords with a certain rank, a certain society, a
certain deportment. I think that a person called like you to live in
Austria and in Italy should be a Catholic. However, it is necessary to
remember that you might marry some one of another faith. Do not
object. I am your father. I can foresee all. I know you will marry only
according to the dictates of your heart. Wait then until it has spoken,
to settle the question.... If you love a Catholic, you will then have
occasion to pay a compliment to your betrothed by adopting his faith,
of which he will be very sensible.... From now until then, I shall not
prevent you from following ceremonies which please you. Those of the
Roman liturgy are, assuredly, among the best; I myself attended Saint
Peter’s at the time of the pontifical government.... The taste, the
magnificence, the music, all moved me.... But to take a definite,
irreparable step, I repeat, you must wait. Your actual condition of a
Protestant has the grand sentiment of being more neutral, less defined.”
What words to listen to by a heart already touched by the attraction of
‘grace and by the nostalgia of eternal life! But the heart was that of
a young girl very pure and very tender. To judge her father was to her
impossible, and the Baron’s firmness had convinced her that she must
obey his wishes and pray that he be enlightened. She therefore waited,
hoping, sustained and directed meanwhile by Cardinal Guerillot,
who later on was to baptize her and to obtain for her the favor of
approaching the holy table for the first time at the Pope’s mass. That
prelate, one of the noblest figures of which the French bishopric has
had cause to be proud, since Monseigneur Pie, was one of those grand
Christians for whom the hand of God is as visible in the direction of
human beings as it is invisible to doubtful souls. When Fanny, already
devoted to her charities, confided in him the serious troubles of her
mind and the discord which had arisen between her and her father on the
so essential point of her baptism, the Cardinal replied:
“Have faith in God. He will give you a sign when your time has come.”
And he uttered those words with an accent whose conviction had filled
the young girl with a certainty which had never left her.
In spite of his seventy years, and of the experiences of the confession,
in spite of the disenchanting struggle with the freemasonry of his
French diocese, which had caused his exile to Rome, the venerable man
looked at Fanny’s marriage from a supernatural standpoint. Many priests
are thus capable of a naivete which, on careful analysis, is often
in the right. But at the moment the antithesis between the authentic
reality and that which they believe, constitutes an irony almost absurd.
When he had baptized Fanny, the old Bishop of Clermont was possessed by
a joy so deep that he said to her, to express to her the more delicately
the tender respect of his friendship:
“I can now say as did Saint Monica after the baptism of Saint Augustine:
‘Cur hic sim, nescio; jam consumpta spe hujus saeculi’. I do not know
why I remain here below. All my hope of the age is consummated. And like
her I can add--the only thing which made me desire to remain awhile was
to see you a Catholic before dying. The traveller, who has tarried, has
now nothing to do but to go. He has gathered the last and the prettiest
flower.”....
Noble and faithful apostle, who was indeed to go so shortly after,
meriting what they said of him, that which the African bishop said
of his mother: “That religious soul was at length absolved from her
body.”.... He did not anticipate that he would pay dearly for that
realization of his last wish! He did not foresee that she whom he
ingenuously termed his most beautiful flower was to become to him the
principal cause of bitter sorrow. Poor, grand Cardinal! It was the final
trial of his life, the supremely bitter drop in his chalice, to assist
at the disenchantment which followed so closely upon the blissful
intoxication of his gentle neophyte’s first initiation. To whom, if
not to him, should she have gone to ask counsel, in all the tormenting
doubts which she at once began to have in her feelings with regard to
her fiance?
It was, therefore, that on the day following the evening on which
imprudent Ardea had jested so persistently upon a subject sacred to her
that she rang at the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guerillot
occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre-Fontaines. There was
no question of incriminating the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of
relating her humiliating observations on the Prince’s intoxication. No.
She wished to ease her mind, on which rested a shade of sorrow. At the
time of her betrothal, she had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion
of her religious life at length freed had inspired her with gratitude
for him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption. She
trembled to-day, not only at not loving him any more, but at hating him,
and above all she felt herself a prey to that repugnance for the useless
cares of the world, to that lassitude of transitory hopes, to that
nostalgia of repose in God, undeniable signs of true vocations.
At the thought that she might, if she survived her father and she
remained free, retire to the ‘Dames du Cenacle,’ she felt at her
approaching marriage an inward repugnance, which augmented still more
the proof of her future husband’s deplorable character. Had she the
right to form such bonds with such feelings? Would it be honorable
to break, without further developments, the betrothal which had been
between her and her father the condition of her baptism? She was already
there, after so few days! And her wound was deeper after the night on
which the Prince had, uttered his careless jests.
“It is permitted you to withdraw,” replied Monsieur Guerillot, “but you
are not permitted to lack charity in your judgment.”
There was within Fanny too much sincerity, her faith was too simple and
too deep for her not to follow out that advice to the letter, and she
conformed to it in deeds as well as in intentions. For, before taking
a walk in the afternoon with Alba, she took the greatest care to remove
all traces which the little scene of the day before could have left in
her friend’s mind. Her efforts went very far. She would ask pardon of
her fiance.... Pardon! For what? For having been wounded by him, wounded
to the depths of her sensibility? She felt that the charity of judgment
recommended by the pious Cardinal was a difficult virtue. It exercises
a discipline of the entire heart, sometimes irreconcilable with the
clearness of the intelligence. Alba looked at her friend with a glance
full of an astonishment, almost sorrowful, and she embraced her, saying:
“Peppino is not worthy even to kiss the ground on which you tread, that
is my opinion, and if he does not spend his entire life in trying to be
worthy of you, it will be a crime.”
As for the Prince himself, the impulses which dictated to his fiancee
words of apology when he was in the wrong, were not unintelligible to
him, as they would have been to Hafner. He thought that the latter had
lectured his daughter, and he congratulated himself on having cut short
at once that little comedy of exaggerated religious feeling.
“Never mind that,” said he, with condescension, “it is I who have failed
in form. For at heart you have always found me respectful of that which
my fathers respected. But times have changed, and certain fanaticisms
are no longer admissible. That is what I have wished to say to you in
such a manner that you could take no offence.”
And he gallantly kissed Fanny’s tiny hand, not divining that he had
redoubled the melancholy of that too-generous child. The discord
continued to be excessive between the world of ideas in which she moved
and that in which the ruined Prince existed. As the mystics say with so
much depth, they were not of the same heaven.
Of all the chimeras which had lasted hours, God alone remained. It
sufficed the noble creature to say: “My father is so happy, I will not
mar his joy.”
“I will do my duty toward my husband. I will be so good a wife that I
will transform him. He has religion. He has heart. It will be my role to
make of him a true Christian. And then I shall have my children and
the poor.” Such were the thoughts which filled the mind of the envied
betrothed. For her the journals began to describe the dresses already
prepared, for her a staff of tailors, dressmakers, needlewomen and
jewellers were working; she would have on her contract the same
signature as a princess of the blood, who would be a princess herself
and related to one of the most glorious aristocracies in the world. Such
were the thoughts she would no doubt have through life, as she walked
in the garden of the Palais Castagna, that historical garden in which
is still to be seen a row of pear-trees, in the place where Sixte-Quint,
near death, gathered some fruit. He tasted it, and he said to Cardinal
Castagna--playing on their two names, his being Peretti--“The pears are
spoiled. The Romans have had enough. They will soon eat chestnuts.” That
family anecdote enchanted Justus Hafner. It seemed to him full of the
most delightful humor. He repeated it to his colleagues at the club,
to his tradesmen, to it mattered not whom. He did not even mistrust
Dorsenne’s irony.
“I met Hafner this morning on the Corso,” said the latter to Alba at one
of the soirees at the end of the month, “and I had my third edition of
the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts. And then, as we took a few
steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte,
saying, ‘We are also related to them.’.... Which means that a
grand-nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino.... I swear he
thinks he is related to Napoleon!... He is not even proud of it. The
Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!... I await the
time when he will blush.”
“And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves,” interrupted
Alba Steno, in a mournful voice. “He is insolently triumphant. But no.
....He will succeed.... If it be true that his fortune is one immense
theft, think of those he has ruined. In what can they believe in the
face of his infamous happiness?”
“If they are philosophers,” replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly,
“this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one
of my friends: ‘One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the
world.’ Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc’s?”
“The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little
thing?”
“Precisely. The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told
me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification. I say no
doubt for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his
impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable. He retired, I
know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near Sienna,
where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always speaks as
of a saint. I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned, but is
invisible. I tried to force an entrance. In short, the volume is
again in the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if
Mademoiselle Hafner still wants it!”
“What good fortune!” exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her
eyes. “I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal. Shall we
make the purchase at once?”
“Montluc’s prayer-book?” repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies
had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty,
more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his
face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his
broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise. “How do you know it is here?
Who has told you? Are there spies everywhere?”
“It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon’s friends,” said
Fanny, in her gentle voice.
“Sara sara,” replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and,
opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous
treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward
them, without giving it up. Then he began a speech, which reproduced the
details given by Montfanon himself. “Ah, it is very authentic. There
is an indistinct but undeniable signature. I have compared it with that
which is preserved in the archives of Sienna. It is Montluc’s writing,
and there is his escutcheon with the turtles.... Here, too, are the
half-moons of the Piccolomini.... This book has a history....”
“The Marshal gave it, after the famous siege, to one of the members of
that illustrious family. And it was for one of the descendants that I
was commissioned to buy it.... They will not give it up for less than
two thousand francs.”
“What a cheat!” said Alba to her companion, in English. “Dorsenne told
me that Monsieur de Monfanon bought it for four hundred.”
“Are you sure?” asked Fanny, who, on receiving a reply in the
affirmative, addressed the bookseller, with the same gentleness, but
with reproach in her accent: “Two thousand francs, Monsieur Ribalta? But
it is not a just price, since you sold it to Monsieur de Montfanon for
one-fifth of that sum.”
“Then I am a liar and a thief,” roughly replied the old man; “a thief
and a liar,” he repeated. “Four hundred francs! You wish to have this
book for four hundred francs? I wish Monsieur de Montfanon was here to
tell you how much I asked him for it.”
The old bookseller smiled cruelly as he replaced the prayerbook in the
drawer, the key of which he turned, and turning toward the two young
girls, whose delicate beauty, heightened by their fine toilettes,
contrasted so delightfully with the sordid surroundings, he enveloped
them with a glance so malicious that they shuddered and instinctively
drew nearer one another. Then the bookseller resumed, in a voice hoarser
and deeper than ever: “If you wish to spend four hundred francs I have
a volume which is worth it, and which I propose to take to the Palais
Savorelli one of these days.... Ha, ha! It must be one of the very
last, for the Baron has bought them all.” In uttering, those enigmatical
words, he opened the cup board which formed the lower part of the chest,
and took from one of the shelves a book wrapped in a newspaper. He then
unfolded the journal, and, holding the volume in his enormous hand with
his dirty nails, he disclosed the title to the two young girls: ‘Hafner
and His Band; Some Reflections on the Scandalous Acquittal. By a
Shareholder.’ It was a pamphlet, at that date forgotten, but which
created much excitement at one time in the financial circles of
Paris, of London and of Berlin, having been printed at once in three
languages--in French, in German and in English--on the day after the
suit of the ‘Credit Austro Dalmate.’ The dealer’s chestnut-colored
eyes twinkled with a truly ferocious joy as he held out the volume and
repeated:
“It is worth four hundred francs.”
“Do not read that book, Fanny,” said Alba quickly, after having read the
title of the work, and again speaking in English; “it is one of those
books with which one should not even pollute one’s thoughts.”
“You may keep the book, sir,” she continued, “since you have made
yourself the accomplice of those who have written it, by speculating on
the fear you hoped it would inspire. Mademoiselle Hafner has known of it
long, and neither she nor her father will give a centime.”
“Very well! So much the better, so much the better,” said Ribalta,
wrapping up his volume again; “tell your father I will keep it at his
service.”
“Ah, the miserable man!” said Alba, when Fanny and she had left the shop
and reentered the carriage. “To dare to show you that!”
“You saw,” replied Fanny, “I was so surprised I could not utter a word.
That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent.
My father?... You do not know his scrupulousness in business. It is the
honor of his profession. There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not
given him a testimonial.”
That impassioned protestation was so touching, the generous child’s
illusion was so sincere, that Alba pressed her hand with a deeper
tenderness. When Alba found herself that evening with her friend
Dorsenne, who again dined at Madame Steno’s, she took him aside to
relate to him the tragical scene, and to ask him: “Have you seen that
pamphlet?”
“To-day,” said the writer. “Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has
just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The
old leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the
question.... I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It
was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on
me, for that is truth.”
“But he was acquitted.”
“Yes,” replied Dorsenne, “though it is none the less true that he ruined
hundreds and hundreds of persons.”
“Then, by the account given you of the case, it is clear to you that he
is dishonest,” interrupted Alba.
“As clear as that you are here, Contessina,” replied Dorsenne, “if to
steal means to plunder one’s neighbors and to escape justice. But that
would be nothing. The sinister corner in this affair is the suicide of
one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately,
and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire
fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme. He lost them,
and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children.”
“My God!” cried Alba, clasping her hands. “And Fanny might have read
that letter in the book.”
“Yes,” continued Julien, “and all the rest with proof in support of
it. But rest assured, she shall not have the volume. I will go to that
anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner
has not already bought it.”
Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding,
his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging. He never
hesitated to render any one a service. He had not told his little friend
an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the
following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with
the twenty louis demanded by the bookseller. Imagine his feelings when
the latter said to him:
“It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne. The young lady was here last night.
She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other. It was to bargain,
no doubt. Ha, ha! But she had to pay the price. I would have asked the
father more. One owes some consideration to a young girl.”
“Wretch!” exclaimed the novelist. “And you can jest after having
committed that Judas-like act! To inform a child of her father’s
misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!... Never, do you hear, never
any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor
Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance. I
will tell the whole world of your infamy. I will write it, and it shall
appear in all the journals of Rome. I will ruin you, I will force you to
close this dusty old shop.”
During the entire day, Dorsenne vainly tried to shake off the weight
of melancholy which that visit to the brigand of the Rue Borgognona had
left upon his heart.
On crossing, at nine o’clock, the threshold of the Villa Steno to give
an account of his mission to the Contessina, he was singularly moved.
There was no one there but the Maitlands, two tourists and two English
diplomatists, on their way to posts in the East.
“I was awaiting you,” said Alba to her friend, as soon as she could
speak with him in a corner of the salon. “I need your advice. Last night
a tragical incident took place at the Hafner’s.”
“Probably,” replied Dorsenne. “Fanny has bought Ribalta’s book.”
“She has bought the book!” said Alba, changing color and trembling. “Ah,
the unhappy girl; the other thing was not sufficient!”
“What other thing?” questioned Julien.
“You remember,” said the young girl, “that I told you of that Noe
Ancona, the agent who served Hafner as a tool in selling up Ardea, and
in thus forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not
think himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of
the Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme,
which the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate
their little dealing to Ardea, and he did so.”
“And Peppino was angry?” asked Dorsenne, shaking his head. “That is not
like him.”
“Indignant or not,” continued Alba, “last night he went to the Palais
Savorelli to make a terrible scene with his future father-in-law.”
“And to obtain an increase of dowry,” said Julian.
“He was not by any means tactful, then,” replied Alba, “for even in the
presence of Fanny, who entered in the midst of their conversation, he
did not pause. Perhaps he had drunk a little more than he could stand,
which has of late become common with him. But, you see, the poor child
was initiated into the abominable bargain with regard to her future, to
her happiness, and if she has read the book, too! It is too dreadful!”
“What a violent scene!” exclaimed Dorsenne. “So the engagement has been
broken off?”
“Not officially. Fanny is ill in bed from the excitement. Ardea came
this morning to see my mother, who has also seen Hafner. She has
reconciled them by proving to them, which she thinks true, that they
have a common interest in avoiding all scandal, and arranging matters.
But it rests with the poor little one. Mamma wished me to go, this
afternoon, to beseech her to reconsider her resolution. For she has told
her father she never wishes to hear the Prince’s voice again. I have
refused. Mamma insists. Am I not right?”
“Who knows?” replied Julien. “What would be her life alone with her
father, now that her illusions with regard to him have been swept away?”
The touching scene had indeed taken place, and less than twenty-four
hours after the novelist had thus expressed to himself the regret of not
assisting at it. Only he was mistaken as to the tenor of the dialogue,
in a manner which proved that the subtlety of intelligence will never
divine the simplicity of the heart. The most dolorous of all moral
tragedies knit and unknit the most often in silence. It was in
the afternoon, toward six o’clock, that a servant came to announce
Mademoiselle Hafner’s visit to the Contessina, busy at that moment
reading for the tenth time the ‘Eglogue Mondaine,’ that delicate story
by Dorsenne. When Fanny entered the room, Alba could see what a trial
her charming god-daughter of the past week had sustained, by the
surprising and rapid alteration in that expressive and noble visage. She
took her hand at first without speaking to her, as if she was entirely
ignorant of the cause of her friend’s real indisposition. She then said:
“How pleased I am to see you! Are you better?”
“I have never been ill,” replied Fanny, who did not know how to tell an
untruth. “I have had pain, that is all.” Looking at Alba, as if to beg
her to ask no question, she added:
“I have come to bid you adieu.”
“You are going away?” asked the Contessina. “Yes,” said Fanny, “I am
going to spend the summer at one of our estates in Styria.” And, in
a low voice: “Has your mother told you that my engagement is broken?”
“Yes,” replied Alba, and both were again silent. After several moments
Fanny was the first to ask: “And how shall you spend your summer?”--“We
shall go to Piove, as usual,” was Alba’s answer. “Perhaps Dorsenne will
be there, and the Maitlands will surely be.” A third pause ensued.
They gazed at one another, and, without uttering another word, they
distinctly read one another’s hearts. The martyrdom they suffered was so
similar, they both knew it to be so like, that they felt the same
pity possess them at the same moment. Forced to condemn with the most
irrevocable condemnation, the one her father, the other, her mother,
each felt attracted toward the friend, like her, unhappy, and, falling
into one another’s arms, they both sobbed.