Francesca looked steadily at him. This piercing gaze went to the bottom of Rodolphe’s soul.
“We want nothing; my work amply supplies our luxuries,” she replied in a grave voice.
“And can I endure that a Francesca should work?” cried he. “One day you will return to your country and find all you left there.” Again the Italian girl looked at Rodolphe. “And you will then repay me what you may have condescended to borrow,” he added, with an expression full of delicate feeling.
“Let us drop the subject,” said she, with incomparable dignity of gesture, expression, and attitude. “Make a splendid fortune, be one of the remarkable men of your country; that is my desire. Fame is a drawbridge which may serve to cross a deep gulf. Be ambitious if you must. I believe you have great and powerful talents, but use them rather for the happiness of mankind than to deserve me; you will be all the greater in my eyes.”
In the course of this conversation, which lasted two hours, Rodolphe discovered that Francesca was an enthusiast for Liberal ideas, and for that worship of liberty which had led to the three revolutions in Naples, Piémont, and Spain. On leaving, he was shown to the door by Gina, the so-called mute. At eleven o’clock no one was astir in the village, there was no fear of listeners; Rodolphe took Gina into a corner, and asked her in a low voice and bad Italian, “Who are your master and mistress, child? Tell me, I will give you this fine new gold piece.”
“Monsieur,” said the girl, taking the coin, “my master is the famous bookseller Lamporani of Milan, one of the leaders of the revolution, and the conspirator of all others whom Austria would most like to have in the Spielberg.”
A bookseller’s wife! Ah, so much the better
, thought he; we are on an equal footing.
—“And what is her family?” he added, “for she looks like a queen.”
“All Italian women do,” replied Gina proudly. “Her father’s name is Colonna.”
Emboldened by Francesca’s modest rank, Rodolphe had an awning fitted to his boat and cushions in the stern. When this was done, the lover came to propose to Francesca to come out on the lake. The Italian accepted, no doubt to carry out her part of a young English Miss in the eyes of the villagers, but she brought Gina with her. Francesca Colonna’s lightest actions betrayed a superior education and the highest social rank. By the way in which she took her place at the end of the boat Rodolphe felt himself in some sort cut off from her, and, in the face of a look of pride worthy of an aristocrat, the familiarity he had intended fell dead. By a glance Francesca made herself a princess, with all the prerogatives she might have enjoyed in the Middle Ages. She seemed to have read the thoughts of this vassal who was so audacious as to constitute himself her protector.
Already, in the furniture of the room where Francesca had received him, in her dress, and in the various trifles she made use of, Rodolphe had detected indications of a superior character and a fine fortune. All these observations now recurred to his mind; he became thoughtful after having been trampled on, as it were, by Francesca’s dignity. Gina, her half-grown up confidante, also seemed to have a mocking expression as she gave a covert or a side glance at Rodolphe. This obvious disagreement between the Italian lady’s rank and her manners was a fresh puzzle to Rodolphe, who suspected some further trick like Gina’s assumed dumbness.
“Where would you go, Signora Lamporani?” he asked.
“Towards Lucerne,” replied Francesca in French.
“Good!” said Rodolphe to himself, “she is not startled by hearing me speak her name; she had, no doubt, foreseen that I should ask Gina—she is so cunning.—What is your quarrel with me?” he went on, going at last to sit down by her side, and asking her by a gesture to give him her hand, which she withdrew. “You are cold and ceremonious; what, in colloquial language, we should call short.”
“It is true,” she replied with a smile. “I am wrong. It is not good manners; it is vulgar. In French you would call it inartistic. It is better to be frank than to harbor cold or hostile feelings towards a friend, and you have already proved yourself my friend. Perhaps I have gone too far with you. You must take me to be a very ordinary woman.”—Rodolphe made many signs of denial.—“Yes,” said the bookseller’s wife, going on without noticing this pantomime, which, however, she plainly saw. “I have detected that, and naturally I have reconsidered my conduct. Well! I will put an end to everything by a few words of deep truth. Understand this, Rodolphe: I feel in myself the strength to stifle a feeling if it were not in harmony with my ideas or anticipation of what true love is. I could love—as we can love in Italy, but I know my duty. No intoxication can make me forget it. Married without my consent to that poor old man, I might take advantage of the liberty he so generously gives me; but three years of married life imply acceptance of its laws. Hence the most vehement passion would never make me utter, even involuntarily, a wish to find myself free.
“Emilio knows my character. He knows that without my heart, which is my own, and which I might give away, I should never allow anyone to take my hand. That is why I have just refused it to you. I desire to be loved
