“Oh!  Let me finish the tale,” cried Marianna.  “I would rather say things myself.  I will be honest; I feel that I am speaking to my truest friend.  Yes, I was in Paris when all you have expressed so clearly took place in my mind; but when I saw you I was saved, for I had never met with the love I had dreamed of from my childhood.  My poor dress and my dwelling-place had hidden me from the eyes of men of your class.  A few young men, whose position did not allow of their insulting me, were all the more intolerable for the levity with which they treated me.  Some made game of my husband, as if he were merely a ridiculous old man; others basely tried to win his good graces to betray me; one and all talked of getting me away from him, and none understood the devotion I feel for a soul that is so far away from us only because it is so near heaven, for that friend, that brother, whose handmaid I will always be.

“You alone understood, did you not? the tie that binds me to him.  Tell me that you feel a sincere and disinterested regard for my Paolo—­”

“I gladly accept your praises,” Andrea interrupted; “but go no further; do not compel me to contradict you.  I love you, Marianna, as we love in the beautiful country where we both were born, I love you with all my soul and with all my strength; but before offering you that love, I will be worthy of yours.  I will make a last attempt to give back to you the man you have loved so long and will love forever.  Till success or defeat is certain, accept without any shame the modest ease I can give you both.  We will go to-morrow and choose a place where he may live.

“Have you such regard for me as will allow you to make me the partner in your guardianship?”

Marianna, surprised at such magnanimity, held out her hand to the Count, who went away, trying to evade the civilities of Giardini and his wife.

On the following day Giardini took the Count up to the room where the Gambaras lodged.  Though Marianna fully knew her lover’s noble soul, —­for there are natures which quickly enter into each other’s spirit, —­Marianna was too good a housewife not to betray her annoyance at receiving such a fine gentleman in so humble a room.  Everything was exquisitely clean.  She had spent the morning in dusting her motley furniture, the handiwork of Signor Giardini, who had put it together, at odd moments of leisure, out of the fragments of the instruments rejected by Gambara.

Andrea had never seen anything quite so crazy.  To keep a decent countenance he turned away from a grotesque bed, contrived by the ingenious cook in the case of an old harpsichord, and looked at Marianna’s narrow couch, of which the single mattress was covered with a white muslin counterpane, a circumstance that gave rise in his mind to some sad but sweet thoughts.

He wished to speak of his plans and of his morning’s work; but Gambara, in his enthusiasm, believing that he had at last met with a willing listener, took possession of him, and compelled him to listen to the opera he had written for Paris.