“In all the world there is no one but Massimilla who would have thought of this surprise,” thought he.  “She heard that I was now a prince; Duke Cataneo is perhaps dead, and has left her his fortune; she is twice as rich as she was; she will marry me——­”

And he ate in a way that would have roused the envy of an invalid Croesus, if he could have seen him; and he drank floods of capital port wine.

“Now I understand the knowing little air she put on as she said, ’Till this evening!’ Perhaps she means to come and break the spell.  What a fine bed! and in the bed-place such a pretty lamp!  Quite a Florentine idea!”

There are some strongly blended natures on which extremes of joy or of grief have a soporific effect.  Now on a youth so compounded that he could idealize his mistress to the point of ceasing to think of her as a woman, this sudden incursion of wealth had the effect of a dose of opium.  When the Prince had drunk the whole of the bottle of port, eaten half a fish and some portion of a French pate, he felt an irresistible longing for bed.  Perhaps he was suffering from a double intoxication.  So he pulled off the counterpane, opened the bed, undressed in a pretty dressing-room, and lay down to meditate on destiny.

“I forgot poor Carmagnola,” said he; “but my cook and butler will have provided for him.”

At this juncture, a waiting-woman came in, lightly humming an air from the Barbiere.  She tossed a woman’s dress on a chair, a whole outfit for the night, and said as she did so: 

“Here they come!”

And in fact a few minutes later a young lady came in, dressed in the latest French style, who might have sat for some English fancy portrait engraved for a Forget-me-not, a Belle Assemblee, or a Book of Beauty.

The Prince shivered with delight and with fear, for, as you know, he was in love with Massimilla.  But, in spite of this faith in love which fired his blood, and which of old inspired the painters of Spain, which gave Italy her Madonnas, created Michael Angelo’s statues and Ghilberti’s doors of the Baptistery,—­desire had him in its toils, and agitated him without infusing into his heart that warm, ethereal glow which he felt at a look or a word from the Duchess.  His soul, his heart, his reason, every impulse of his will, revolted at the thought of an infidelity; and yet that brutal, unreasoning infidelity domineered over his spirit.  But the woman was not alone.

The Prince saw one of those figures in which nobody believes when they are transferred from real life, where we wonder at them, to the imaginary existence of a more or less literary description.  The dress of this stranger, like that of all Neapolitans, displayed five colors, if the black of his hat may count for a color; his trousers were olive-brown, his red waistcoat shone with gilt buttons, his coat was greenish, and his linen was more yellow than white.  This personage