The next day Gama came into my room with a face so bright that I saw at once he had come with news.
The Cardinal-Vicar, he said, had learned that the ravisher was my friend, and had therefore taken me for the girl's accomplice, since she was the daughter of my French teacher.
"Everybody," he added, "is satisfied that you knew the whole affair, and it is natural to suspect that the poor girl spent the night in your room. I admire your prudent reserve during our conversation of yesterday. You kept so well on your guard that I would have sworn you knew nothing whatever of the affair."
"And it is the truth," I answered, very seriously; "I have only learned all the circumstances from you this moment. I know the girl, but I have not seen her for six weeks, since I gave up my French lessons; I am much better acquainted with the young man, but he never confided his project to me. However, people may believe whatever they please. You say that it is natural for the girl to have passed the night in my room, but you will not mind my laughing in the face of those who accept their own suppositions as realities."
"That, my dear friend," said the abbe, "is one of the vices of the Romans; happy those who can afford to laugh at it; but this slander may do you harm, even in the mind of our cardinal."
That evening there was no performance at the Opera, so I went to the cardinal's reception. No one changed his manner toward me.
The cardinal received me as before, and the marchioness, if anything, was even more gracious than usual.
After dinner the next day, Gama told me the cardinal had sent the girl to a convent, where she would be kept at his eminence's expense and treated with all due care. He believed she would not leave it except as the wife of the young doctor.
"I should be very happy if it should turn out so," I replied; "for they are both most estimable people."
Two days later I paid a visit to Father Georgi. He received me with a troubled air and told me that the great talk of Rome was the failure of the attempt to carry off Dalacqua's daughter, and that the credit of the whole intrigue had been laid at my door, to his great displeasure.
I told him what I had already told Gama, and he appeared to believe me, but he added that in Rome people did not want to know things as they truly were, but only as they wished them to be.
"It is known, that you have been in the habit of going every morning to Dalacqua's house; it is known that the young man often called on you; that is quite enough. People do not care, to know the circumstances which might counteract the slander, but only those, likely to give it new force for slander is vastly relished in the Holy City. Your innocence will not prevent the whole adventure being booked to your account, if, in forty years' time you were proposed as pope in the conclave."
For several days afterward, the fatal adventure gave me more annoyance than I cared to show.
Everyone spoke of it to me and I could see clearly that people pretended to believe what I said only because they did not dare to do otherwise.
The marchioness herself told me with a smile that Signora Dalacqua now owed me singular obligations.
My sorrow was greater still when, during the last days of the carnival, I noticed that Cardinal Acquaviva's manner towards me had grown restrained, though I alone seemed to observe it.
The uproar had begun to fade when, in the first days of Lent, the cardinal sent for me to his private chamber.
"The affair of the girl Dalacqua is now over;" he said. "it is no longer spoken of, but the verdict of the public is that you and I have profited by the clumsiness of the young man who intended to carry her off. In reality I care little for such a verdict, for, under similar circumstances, I should always act in a similar manner, and I do not wish to know that which no one can compel you to confess, and which, as a man of honour, you must not admit.
"If you had no previous knowledge of the intrigue, and had actually turned the girl out of your room (supposing she did come to you), you would have been guilty of a wrong and cowardly action, because you would have sealed her misery for the remainder of her days, and it would not have caused you to escape the suspicion of being an accomplice, while at the same time it would have attached to you the odium of dastardly treachery.
"Notwithstanding all I have just said, you can easily imagine that, in spite of my utter contempt for all gossiping fools, I cannot openly defy them. I therefore feel myself compelled to ask you not only to quit my service, but even to leave Rome. I undertake to supply you with an honourable pretext for your departure, so as to insure you the continuation of the respect which you may have secured through the marks of esteem I have bestowed upon you.
"I promise you to whisper in the ear of any person you may choose, and even to inform everybody, that you are going on an important mission which I have entrusted to you. You have only to name the country where you want to go; I have friends everywhere, and can recommend you to such purpose that you will be sure to find employment.
"My letters of recommendation will be in my own handwriting, and nobody need know where you are going. Meet me to-morrow at the Villa Negroni, and let me know where my letters are to be addressed. You must be ready to start within a week. Believe me, I am sorry to lose you; but the sacrifice is forced upon me by the most absurd prejudice. Go now, and do not let me witness your grief."
He said the last words because he saw my eyes fill. He gave me no time to answer.
Before leaving his room, I gathered myself and put on so cheerful a face that the Abbé Gama, who took me to his room for coffee, complimented me upon my happy looks.
"I am sure," he said, "that they are caused by the conversation you have had with his eminence."
"You are right; but you do not know the sorrow at my heart which I try not to shew outwardly."
"What sorrow?"
"I am afraid of failing in a difficult mission which the cardinal has entrusted me with this morning. I am compelled to conceal how little confidence I feel in myself in order not to lessen the good opinion his eminence is pleased to entertain of me."
"If my advice can be of any service to you, pray dispose of me; but you are quite right to show yourself calm and cheerful. Is it any business to transact in Rome?"
"No; it is a journey I shall have to undertake in a week or ten days."
"Which way?"
"Towards the west."
"Oh! I am not curious to know."
I went out alone and walked in the Villa Borghese for two hours, with my head full of black thoughts.
Rome still pleased me, and fortune had seemed near enough to touch; yet in a moment I found myself cast down into the abyss, and I could not even tell in which direction to turn.
I reviewed my conduct and condemned it as harshly as I could. I found no real fault in myself, except that I had been too kind.
Even so, I perceived how right the good Father Georgi had been. I ought not only to have kept clear of the lovers' intrigue, but to have changed my French teacher as soon as I heard of it.
This, however, was like calling in a doctor after death has struck the patient.
I was still young, and misfortune had not yet taught me her lessons. Worse still, I knew as little of the wickedness of society. It was very difficult for me to have that prudence which a man gains only by long intercourse with the world.
Where was I to go?
That question followed me all night and clung to me through the next morning, but I thought in vain.
After Rome, I was indifferent where I went to!
In the evening I gave up supper and retired to my room. Soon after, Abbé Gama came to say, on the cardinal's behalf, that I was not to accept any invitation for the next day, since his eminence wished to speak with me.
The next day I waited upon his eminence at the Villa Negroni. He was walking with his secretary, and the moment he saw me he sent the man away.
When we were alone, I laid before him the whole intrigue of the two lovers and spoke of my departure with all the grief I could command.
"I have no hope of success," I added, "for I am certain that Fortune will smile upon me only as long as I am near your eminence."
For nearly an hour I poured out my sorrow, and I did not spare my tears.
It was all useless.
His resolution did not soften.
Kindly, but firmly he pressed me to tell him to what part of Europe I wanted to go.
In my vexation and despair, I answered, Constantinople.
"Constantinople!" he exclaimed, moving back a step or two.
"Yes, monsignor, Constantinople," I repeated, wiping away my tears.
He was a man of wit, though Spanish to the marrow. After remaining silent a few minutes, he said with a smile,
"I am glad you have not chosen Ispahan, as I should have felt rather embarrassed. When do you wish to go?"
"This day week, as your eminence has ordered me."
"Do you intend to sail from Naples or from Venice?"
"From Venice."
"I will give you such a passport as will be needed, for you will find two armies in winter-quarters in the Romagna. It strikes me that you may tell everybody that I sent you to Constantinople, for nobody will believe you."
This diplomatic suggestion nearly made me smile. The cardinal told me that I should dine with him, and he left me to join his secretary.
When I returned to the palace, thinking of the choice I had made, I said to myself, "Either I am mad, or I am obeying the impulse of a mysterious genius which sends me to Constantinople to work out my fate."
I was only astonished that the cardinal had so readily accepted my choice.
"Without any doubt," I thought, "he did not wish me to believe that he had boasted of more than he could achieve, in telling me that he had friends everywhere. But to whom can he recommend me in Constantinople? I have not the slightest idea, but to Constantinople I must go."
I dined alone with his eminence. He showed me an unusual kindness, and I answered with a face of calm contentment, for my self-pride, stronger even than my sorrow, forbade me to let anyone guess that I was in disgrace.
My deepest grief was, however, to leave the marchioness, with whom I was in love, and from whom I had not obtained any important favour.
Two days later, the cardinal gave me a passport for Venice and a sealed letter addressed to Osman Bonneval, Pacha of Caramania, at Constantinople.
There was no need of my saying anything to anyone, but, as the cardinal had not forbidden me to do it, I showed the address on the letter to all my acquaintances.
The Chevalier de Lezze, the Venetian ambassador, gave me a letter for a wealthy Turk, a very worthy man and his friend.
Don Gaspar and Father Georgi asked me to write to them. Abbé Gama only laughed, and said he was quite sure I was not going to Constantinople.
I then paid my farewells to Donna Cecilia, who had just received a letter from Lucrezia telling her that she was soon to be a mother.
I also visited Angélique and Don Francisco, who had lately married without inviting me to the wedding.
When I went to Cardinal Acquaviva for his final instructions, he handed me a purse containing one hundred ounces, worth seven hundred sequins. Added to the three hundred I already had, this made my fortune amount to one thousand sequins.
I kept two hundred, and for the rest I took a bill of exchange on a Ragusan established at Ancona.
I left Rome in a coach with a lady bound for Our Lady of Loreto, where she was going to fulfil a vow made during a dangerous illness of her daughter, who travelled with her. The young lady was ugly, and my journey was a rather tedious one.