The next day, the count received a visit from his son.
The young man's face was plain, but his manner had distinction. He spoke little, listened much, and carried himself with quiet modesty.
I saw him again twenty-five years later in Spain, wearing the uniform of a cadet in the king's body-guard. He had served twenty years as a private before obtaining this poor promotion.
The reader will meet him again in due time. I will only say that, when I met him in Spain, he insisted he had never known me. His self-love prompted that contemptible lie.
On the eighth day the count left the fortress at dawn. I followed that same evening.
I had arranged to meet the major at a coffee-house in Saint Mark's Square, from there he would conduct me to Grimani's house.
Before departing, I took leave of the major's wife.
Her kindness had been the gentlest part of my captivity, and her memory has never ceased being dear to me.
She pressed my hand, smiled, and said, "I thank you for proving your alibi so cleverly. But you should also thank me for understanding you so well. My husband knew nothing about it until it was all over."
As soon as I set foot again in Venecia, I went straight to Madame Orio. She made me feel more than welcome.
I stayed to supper, and my two charming friends, who prayed daily for the bishop's demise, rewarded my liberty with the sweetest hospitality of the night.
At noon the next day I met the major as agreed, and we went together to the Abbé Grimani.
He received me with the air of a guilty man begging for mercy. What astonished me most was not his shame, but his stupidity.
His first request was that I should forgive Razetta and his companion.
He told me the bishop was expected very soon. A room, he said, had already been prepared for me, and I could take my meals with him.
Then he introduced M. Valavero, a man of ability who had just resigned the ministry of war after the usual six months of office.
I saluted him; we spoke of trifles until the major took his leave.
The moment we were alone, Valavero leaned toward me.
"Confess it," he said. "You were the one who attacked Razetta."
I told him the thrashing was mine, and gave him every particular of the exploit, which amused him immensely.
"You perpetrated the affair before midnight," he said at last, wiping his eyes. "The fools had made a mistake in their accusation."
"It seems so."
"Still," he added, "their mistake hardly mattered. Your sprained ankle would have served as alibi by itself. Everyone believed it a real accident."
I listened politely, but my mind was already elsewhere.
I trust my kind reader has not forgotten the heavy weight upon my conscience, of which I longed to rid myself.
I had to see the goddess of my fancy, to obtain my pardon, or die at her feet.
I found the house without difficulty. The count was absent.
The countess received me kindly, yet her appearance struck me dumb. My surprise was so great I did not know what to say.
I fancied that I was visiting an angel in her own paradise.
Instead, I found a large sitting room furnished with four rickety chairs and a dirty old table.
There was hardly any light, for the shutters were nearly closed.
It might have been to keep out the heat, yet I suspected another reason, to hide the windows whose glass was all broken.
Even in that dimness I saw the countess's old tattered gown, and a chemise that did not shine with cleanliness.
I stood there like a man who has opened a jewel-case and found it full of ashes.
My silence betrayed me.
She looked at me a moment, then withdrew quietly.
"I will send my daughter," she said.
A few minutes later the young countess entered with an ease and nobility that her room could not give her.
She greeted me without embarrassment.
"I have expected you with impatience," she said. "But you surprise me at an hour when I do not usually receive visits."
I could not answer.
She seemed another person.
In the fortress, light, dress, and movement had made her a vision.
Here, in her miserable dishabille, she appeared almost ugly.
I wondered at the impression she had made upon me in the fortress.
She saw my surprise, and partly guessed my thoughts.
A look came over her, not vexation, but sorrow, and it called forth all my pity.
Had she been a philosopher, she might have despised me at once, as a man whose sympathy depends on satin, rank, and the appearance of wealth.
But she chose another weapon.
She leaned on sincerity.
She felt that if she could call a little sentiment into play, it would certainly plead in her favour.
"I see that you are astonished, Reverend Sir," she said quietly, "and I know the reason of your surprise. You expected to see great splendour here, and you find only misery."
She did not lower her eyes. She spoke without bitterness, as if she had long since grown tired of complaint.
"The government allows my father but a small salary, and there are nine of us. As we must attend church on Sundays and holidays in a style proper to our condition, we are often compelled to go without our dinner, in order to get out of pledge the clothes which urgent need too often obliges us to part with, and which we pledge anew on the following day. If we did not attend mass, the curate would strike our names off the list of those who share the alms of the Confraternity of the Poor, and those alms alone keep us afloat."
What a sad tale!
She had guessed rightly. I was touched, but rather with shame than true emotion.
I was not rich myself, and as I was no longer in love, I heaved a deep sigh and remained as cold as ice.
Still, her position was painful, and politeness is sometimes the last virtue left to us.
I answered politely, speaking with kindness and assuring her of my sympathy.
"Were I wealthy," I said, "I would soon show you that your tale of woe has not fallen on unfeeling ears; but I am poor, and, being at the eve of my departure from Venecia, even my friendship would be useless to you."
We spoke a little longer, without aim, without flame.
At last I paid her the only compliment I had left, and expressed the hope that her beauty might yet win her happiness.
She reflected for a moment, then said with grave simplicity:
"That may happen someday, provided that the man who feels the power of my charms understands that they can be bestowed only with my heart, and is willing to render me the justice I deserve; I am only looking for a lawful marriage, without dreaming of rank or fortune; I no longer believe in the first, and I know how to live without the second; for I have been accustomed to poverty, and even to abject need; but you cannot realize that."
Then, as if wishing to change the subject before her pride could suffer, she added:
"Come. I will show you my drawings."
"You are very good, mademoiselle," I said.
Alas! I was not thinking of her drawings, and I could no longer feel interested in her Eve, but I followed her.
She led me into a little chamber.
A table, a single chair, a small cracked toilet-glass, and a bed. The straw palliasse had been turned back, no doubt to suggest that sheets lay beneath.
Yet what struck me hardest was not the poverty itself.
It was a certain disgusting smell, the cause of which was recent; I was thunderstruck.
Had I still been in love, this antidote would have been sufficiently powerful to cure me in an instant.
In that moment I wanted only to escape, never to return. I even wished I could fling a handful of ducats on the table and call it the price of my ransom.
The poor girl spread her drawings before me. They were truly good.
I praised them warmly, though I took care to avoid any mention of Eve and did not dare revive my former joke about Adam.
I asked her, for the sake of saying something, why she did not try to render her talent remunerative by learning pastel drawing.
"I would," she said, "but the box of chalks alone costs two sequins."
"Will you forgive me," I asked, "if I am bold enough to offer you six?"
She drew in her breath.
"Alas! I accept them gratefully, and to be indebted to you for such a service makes me truly happy."
Unable to keep back her tears, she turned her head to conceal them from me.
While she looked away, I laid the money on the table.
Then, out of politeness, and to spare her the humiliation of thanks too openly received, I saluted her lips with a kiss.
She was free to take it for a lover's kiss if she wished. I preferred her to ascribe my reserve to the respect I felt for her.
I told her I would call another day to see her father. I never kept that promise.
The reader will see how I met her again ten years later.
How many thoughts crowded upon my mind as I left that house!
What a lesson!
I compared reality with the imagination, and I had to give the preference to the latter, as reality is always dependent on it.
It was then I began to foresee a truth which has been clearly proved to me in my afterlife, namely, that love is only a feeling of curiosity more or less intense, grafted upon the inclination placed in us by nature that the species may be preserved.
In this respect, woman resembles a book. Good or bad, it must first tempt us by its cover.
If the cover does not draw the eye, we feel no desire to open it. Desire grows in proportion to the interest awakened by that first glance.
The cover of a book runs from top to bottom. So does the first impression of a woman.
And her feet, which are the most important to every man who shares my taste, offer the same interest as the edition of the work.
If it is true that most amateurs bestow little or no attention upon the feet of a woman, it is likewise a fact that most readers care little or nothing whether a book is of the first edition or the tenth.
Women, therefore, are perfectly right to take the greatest care of their face, their dress, their general appearance.
For it is only by that part of the frontispiece that they can call forth a wish to read them in those men who have not been endowed by nature with the privilege of blindness.
And as a man who has read many great books grows hungry for novelty, even bad novelty, so a man who has known many women, and all handsome women, ends by feeling curiosity for ugly specimens when he meets with entirely new ones.
It is all very well for his eye to discover the paint which conceals the reality, but his passion has become a vice, and suggests some argument in favour of the lying frontispiece.
Perhaps, he tells himself, the work is better than the title page. Perhaps reality will be more acceptable than the paint that hides it.
He tries to peruse the book, but the leaves have not been opened.
He meets resistance.
The living book must be read by established rules, and the bookworm falls victim to coquetry, that monster which persecutes all who make a business of love.
As for thee, intelligent man, who hast read the few preceding lines, let me tell thee that, if they do not assist in opening thy eyes, thou art lost; I mean that thou art certain of being a victim to the fair sex to the very last moment of thy life.
If my candour does not displease thee, accept my congratulations.