“This is what you do with your stupid talk!” he said rudely to Gonzo: “you are making me reach the Corso after the Princess, whose Cavaliere d’onore I am, when she may have orders to give me. Come along! Hurry up! Tell me in a few words, if you can, what is this so-called love affair of the Coadjutor?”
But Gonzo wished to keep this anecdote for the Marchesa, who had invited him to dine; he did hurry up, in a very few words, the story demanded of him, and the Marchese, half asleep, ran off to take his siesta. Gonzo adopted a wholly different manner with the poor Marchesa. She had remained so young and natural in spite of her high position, that she felt it her duty to make amends for the rudeness with which the Marchese had just spoken to Gonzo. Charmed by this success, her guest recovered all his eloquence, and made it a pleasure, no less than a duty, to enter into endless details with her.
Little Annetta Marini gave as much as a sequin for each place that was kept for her for the sermons; she always arrived with two of her aunts and her father’s old cashier. These places, which were reserved for her overnight, were generally chosen almost opposite the pulpit, but slightly in the direction of the high altar, for she had noticed that the Coadjutor often turned towards the altar. Now, what the public also had noticed was that, not infrequently, those speaking eyes of the young preacher rested with evident pleasure on the young heiress, that striking beauty; and apparently with some attention, for, when he had his eyes fixed on her, his sermon became learned; the quotations began to abound in it, there was no more sign of that eloquence which springs from the heart; and the ladies, whose interest ceased almost at once, began to look at the Marini and to find fault with her.
Clelia made him repeat to her three times over all these singular details. At the third repetition she became lost in meditation; she was calculating that just fourteen months had passed since she last saw Fabrizio. “Would it be very wrong,” she asked herself, “to spend an hour in a church, not to see Fabrizio but to hear a famous preacher? Besides, I shall take a seat a long way from the pulpit, and I shall look at Fabrizio only once as I go in and once more at the end of the sermon. … No,” Clelia said to herself, “it is not Fabrizio I am going to see, I am going to hear the astounding preacher!” In the midst of all these reasonings, the Marchesa felt some remorse; her conduct had been so exemplary for fourteen months! “Well,” she said to herself, in order to secure some peace of mind, “if the first woman to arrive this evening has been to hear Monsignor del Dongo, I shall go too; if she has not been, I shall stay away.”
Having come to this decision, the Marchesa made Gonzo happy by saying to him:
“Try to find out on what day the Coadjutor will be preaching, and in what church. This evening, before you go, I shall perhaps have a commission to give you.”
No sooner had Gonzo set off for the Corso than Clelia went to take the air in the garden of her palazzo. She did not consider the objection that for ten months she had not set foot in it. She was lively, animated; she had a colour. That evening, as each boring visitor entered the room, her heart throbbed with emotion. At length they announced Gonzo, who at the first glance saw that he was going to be the indispensable person for the next week; “The Marchesa is jealous of the little Marini, and, upon my word, it would be a fine drama to put on the stage,” he said to himself, “with the Marchesa playing the leading lady, little Annetta the juvenile, and Monsignor del Dongo the lover! Upon my word, the seats would not be too dear at two francs.” He was beside himself with joy, and throughout the evening cut everybody short, and told the most ridiculous stories (that, for example, of the famous actress and the Marquis de Pequigny, which he had heard the day before from a French visitor). The Marchesa, for her part, could not stay in one place; she moved about the drawing-room, she passed into a gallery adjoining it into which the Marchese had admitted no picture that had not cost more than twenty thousand francs. These pictures spoke in so clear a language that evening that they wore out the Marchesa’s heart with the force of her emotion. At last she heard the double doors open, she ran to the drawing-room: it was the Marchesa Raversi! But, on making her the customary polite speeches, Clelia felt that her voice was failing her. The Marchesa made her repeat twice the question: “What do you think of the fashionable preacher?” which she had not heard at first.
“I did regard him as a little intriguer, a most worthy nephew of the illustrious Contessa Mosca, but the last time he preached; why, it was at the Church of the Visitation, opposite you, he was so sublime, that I could not hate him any longer, and I regard him as the most eloquent man I have ever heard.”
“So you have been to hear his sermons?” said Clelia, trembling with happiness.
“Why,” the Marchesa laughed, “haven’t you been listening? I wouldn’t miss one for anything in the world. They say that his lungs are affected, and that soon he will have to give up preaching.”
No sooner had the Marchesa left than Clelia called Gonzo to the gallery.
“I have almost decided,” she told him, “to hear this preacher who is so highly praised. When does he preach?”
“Next Monday, that is to say in three days from now; and one
