Quite still he sate for some minutes, conscious of nothing save the pictures which memory was passing before his eye.  Then suddenly, with a bound, he sprang from his chair, and away from it, and beat his head against the opposite wall of the large room.

“Fool, fool; enslaved, besotted idiot!  I am lost, spelled; the victim of sorcery I cannot fight against.  What am I to do, what am I to do?  Surely I can keep my steps from going near her.  If I were to swear now that I will never set eyes on her more?”

And then he recollected that it was impossible for him even to seek that means of safety without giving rise to all kinds of observations, and wonder, and speculation in the city.  He was to see the prima donna on the following day.  His habits in such matters, well known to all the town, brought him into frequent contact with Bianca, as with other ladies who had been similarly engaged in Ravenna.  What would be thought, or guessed, or said, if he were suddenly to refuse to hold any further communication with her?

And would he not thus be simply leaving the coast all free to his nephew?  To be sure.  There, there, he could see it all.  And that was the worst hell of all.  Anything, anything was preferable to that.  Come what would that should never, never, never be.  Rather—­rather anything.  He gnashed his teeth, and clenched his hand; and a sudden agony of hatred for both Bianca and his nephew seemed to steal like a snake into his heart, and maddened him.

And thus the miserable man passed the greater part of the night in useless strugglings with the bonds that bound him.

It was near morning before he crept, still sleepless, but utterly worn out, to his bed.

He did sleep, exhausted as he was, after awhile; but it was only to see again in dreams all that he had so bitterly wished that he had never seen at all.  Sometimes he was himself by Bianca’s side, licensed to revel to the full in her every charm.  And then the dream would change.  It was Ludovico he saw in her white arms; and he started from his fevered sleep bathed in perspiration and quivering in every limb.

The next morning he was, in truth, quite ill enough to have furnished a very sufficient and unsuspected excuse for not going to meet the impresario at Bianca’s house according to appointment.  He thought at first that he would do so.  But as the time drew near, he dragged himself from his bed, haggard, fevered, and looking very ill, and crawled to the appointed meeting.

BOOK IV

The last Days of the Carnival

CHAPTER I

In the Cardinal’s Chapel