“I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was; and out of the part which I played has come all this mischief.  I have intimated to you that the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other’s name) had been good friends before Ginevra preferred hint to my false lover.  Pretending therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if he pleased, might have ocular testimony.  “Greatly astonished at this news was Ariodante.  He had received all the proofs of his mistress’s affection which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any rate, to let him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he asserted to be in his power.  The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the ruins I spoke of; and there the two were posted on the night when I played my unhappy part in the balcony.  He brought Lurcanio with him (that was the brother’s name), because he suspected that the duke had a design on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be possible.  Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother’s engagement with the princess.  It had been disclosed hitherto neither to him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the king himself.  Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace, and not to come to him unless he should call:  ‘otherwise, my dear brother,’ concluded he, ‘stir not a step, if you love me.’ “‘Doubt me not,’ said Lurcanio; and, with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post.

“Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,—­the only person visible at that moment in all the place.  In a few minutes the Duke of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes of both, and let down the ladder.

“Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely houses, perceived all that was going on.

“I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her very self.  The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.