accept your sonnets in the dress of his providing, you may give up the case as hopeless.  In a word, my dear Francis,” he said laughing, “there shall be only one thing wanting to complete your felicity, and even that I may be able to afford you.  You will have your mistress at hand, her husband accommodated, and will only need a rival, it seems to me, to stimulate you to a pleasant exertion of your powers.  There ought not to be much difficulty in finding one in Florence.”  He was silent awhile, then said, as if musing on the absurdity, “Semifonte, for example!” I begged him not to mention that man.

The weeks passed thus pleasantly for me, and I was wafted from winter into the fragrant chambers of spring before I was aware.  On the morning of April 23, as I was sitting in my lodging, drinking my chocolate, I received a letter from Father Carnesecchi, saying that Aurelia was in Florence; and while I was still standing in ferment with his note shaking in my hand, Virginia burst into my room, fell at my feet, clasped me by the knees.  “Master, news, news!” she cried, and kissed my hands with passion.

CHAPTER XXIII

AURELIA FORGIVES

The mingling of emotions, like that of two waters, may produce a volume whose direction cannot be calculated by any previous knowledge of the separate streams.  In my case, just described, the reader has seen that while my heart was still palpitating at the news of the recovery of a mistress, it was to be shaken anew by the sight of a dear friend.  Two sorts of joy met and blended their forces within me; their issue in one turbulent flood, which I should have thought to see heading to Aurelia at the convent, instead of that poured themselves upon the bosom of Virginia.  I raised her from my knees where, upon her own, she was clinging, and clasped her in my arms.  I was, indeed, happy to see her again, and so much so that I forgot entirely that I had only myself to blame for our long separation.  For the first time in our lives our lips met.

But if I was moved, what is to be said of her?  I can hardly express the painful scene which followed.  She lost all control of her senses; she clung to me as if I had been a spar in some stormy sea wherein she drowned; she uttered incoherent cries, she gasped, sobbed, was clean distraught.  When I held her, when I kissed her, she struggled like a caught bird, fought furiously, used her teeth, her nails.  And yet all the time she was caressing me with every diminutive, every sweet term of love which the most passionate people in the world can find as expression of their love-thoughts.  She stroked my cheeks, hair and shoulders, crooned over me like a brooding dove, held me so straitly that I was near choking; or with tragic mouth and eyes of sombre fire she adjured me to kill her there and then, lest any subsequent moment of her life might be less full of bliss than the present.