All through the service Fausta, after letting her eyes wander over the whole church, would end by bringing her gaze to rest, charged with love and happiness, on the dim corner in which M⸺ was concealed. In an impassioned heart, love is liable to exaggerate the slightest shades of meaning, it draws from them the most ridiculous conclusions; did not poor M⸺ end by persuading himself that Fausta had seen him, that, having in spite of his efforts perceived his deadly jealousy, she wished to reproach him with it and at the same time to console him for it with these tender glances?
The tomb of the cardinal, behind which M⸺ had taken his post of observation, was raised four or five feet above the marble floor of San Giovanni. The fashionable mass ending about one o’clock, the majority of the faithful left the church, and Fausta dismissed the beaux of the town, on a pretext of devotion; as she remained kneeling on her chair, her eyes, which had grown more tender and more brilliant, were fixed on M⸺; since there were now only a few people left in the building, she no longer put her eyes to the trouble of ranging over the whole of it before coming joyfully to rest on the cardinal’s statue. “What delicacy!” thought Conte M⸺, imagining that he was the object of her gaze. At length Fausta rose and quickly left the church after first making some odd movements with her hands.
M⸺, blind with love and almost entirely relieved of his mad jealousy, had left his post to fly to his mistress’s palazzo and thank her a thousand, thousand times, when, as he passed in front of the cardinal’s tomb, he noticed a young man all in black: this funereal being had remained until then on his knees, close against the epitaph on the tomb, in such a position that the eyes of the jealous lover, in their search for him, must pass over his head and miss him altogether.
This young man rose, moved briskly away, and was immediately surrounded by seven or eight persons, somewhat clumsy in their gait, of a singular appearance, who seemed to belong to him. M⸺ hurried after him, but, without any marked sign of obstruction, was stopped in the narrow passage formed by the wooden drum of the door, by these clumsy men who were protecting his rival; and when finally, at the tail of their procession, he reached the street, he was in time only to see someone shut the door of a carriage of humble aspect, which, by an odd contrast, was drawn by a pair of excellent horses, and in a moment had passed out of sight.
He returned home panting with fury; presently there arrived his watchers, who reported impassively that that morning the mysterious lover, disguised as a priest, had been kneeling in an attitude of great devotion against a tomb which stood in the entrance of a dark chapel in the church of San Giovanni. Fausta had remained in the church until it was almost empty, and had then rapidly exchanged certain signs with the stranger; with her hands she had seemed to be making a series of crosses. M⸺ hastened to the faithless one’s house; for the first time she could not conceal her uneasiness; she told him, with the artless mendacity of a passionate woman that, as usual, she had gone to San Giovanni, but that she had seen no sign there of that man who was persecuting her. On hearing these words, M⸺, beside himself with rage, railed at her as at the vilest of creatures, told her everything that he had seen himself, and, the boldness of her lies increasing with the force of his accusations, took his dagger and flung himself upon her. With great coolness Fausta said to him:
“Very well, everything you complain of is the absolute truth, but I have tried to keep it from you so that you should not go rushing desperately into mad plans of vengeance which may ruin us both; for, let me tell you once for all, as far as I can make out, the man who is persecuting me with his attentions is one who is accustomed not to meet with any opposition to his wishes, in this country at any rate.” Having very skilfully reminded M⸺ that, after all, he had no legal authority over her, Fausta ended by saying that probably she would not go again to the church of San Giovanni. M⸺ was desperately in love; a trace of coquetry had perhaps combined itself with prudence in the young woman’s heart; he felt himself disarmed. He thought of leaving Parma; the young Prince, however powerful he might be, could not follow him, or if he did follow him would cease to be anything more than his equal. But pride represented to him
