But I had another brewing, or thought that I should have.  As the cavaliere was about to retire, I stopped him and said that I wished to accompany him.  He scratched his head.

“Why, my dear sir,” says he, “that will be plaguily inconvenient at this moment.  My rooms are full of guests, d’ye see?  Your charming lady is entertaining all the Senators’ mistresses, and I am in the midst of a carouse with their Serenities.  I am not one for hard-and-fast categories, as you know.  Your dirty shirt and ragged elbows are nothing to me—­but zounds!  I can’t answer for the most Serene Ancients.”

I said then that I would retire to my room and wait for my wife—­but to that he objected that, in strict truth, and to keep up the fiction upon which my safety depended, I had no room, at all.  My wife was considered to be his wife, while I was supposed to be what I had professed myself, his servant.  Would I, he asked me, for the sake of a night’s gratification, imperil the many happy years which, he hoped and would take care, should be in store for me?

I was somewhat slow in meeting this preposterous question as it deserved, and when I opened my lips to speak he stopped me with, “Say no more.  I don’t ask your thanks.  Your safety is as dear to me as my own.”  He beckoned to one of the scullions, and “Hi, you,” says he, “show this fellow of mine where he can sleep, and see to it that his company be honest.”  With that he ruffled upstairs with the airs of a grand duke, and left me once more stranded with the cooks.  To come to an end of this humiliating page, rejecting all offers of company, I was accommodated with a wretched cupboard below the stairs, which smelt vilely of sour wine and mildewed cheese, and ruefully prepared to spend what sort of night I could, with my thoughts for bedfellows.

I know not what hour of the night it was when I was roused out of a dream-tortured sleep by the creaking of my cupboard door.  Looking up, the light of a candle which she held showed me Virginia.

“Behold Virginia,” she said.  “Did you doubt whether I should come?”

“I never doubted but you would come if you could,” I replied, “but I did not see how it was possible.”  She blew out the candle and crept to my side.  “The cavaliere, by diverting his friends with your plight,” she said, “revealed to me where he had left you.  I excused myself to the company and retired.  I think he will be disagreeably surprised before morning.”

I was much touched by her devotion and wifely duty, and assured her of it by every means in my power.

CHAPTER XXXII

WE LIVE HAPPILY IN LUCCA