After a similar night’s entertainment at Poggibonsi we set out, intending to be at Siena that same night.  I need hardly say that the so near prospect filled me with various and contending emotions.  I might hope, in the first place, to find Belviso there, returned with Virginia, my faithful and tender wife.  To know her safe, to have her by my side, to be conscious, as I could not fail to be, of her deep and ardent love for me testified in every glance of her eyes—­such could not fail to be a satisfaction to any honest, any sensible man.  Such, too, I hope they were.  But I must needs confess that not this confident expectation (for confident I was of Belviso’s success) alone moved me and elated me at the moment.  No, it is the truth that, the nearer I came to Siena, the more I realised the abiding influence of Aurelia upon my heart and conscience.  I could not but tremble at the thought that in so few hours I should be treading the actual earth which her feet had lightly pressed during the years when she must have been at her happiest, and if not also at her loveliest—­since when was she not at that?—­assuredly at her purest and most radiant hour; before she had been sullied by the doctor’s possessory rights, before she had been hurt by my dastardly advances.  This, then, this it was which really affected me, to feel like some pilgrim of old, to Loreto, may be, or Compostella, to Walsingham, to Rome—­nay, to the very bourne and goal of every Christian’s desire, Jerusalem, the Holy City, itself—­to feel, I say, singularly uplifted, singularly set apart and dedicated to the privilege which was now at last to be mine.  From the moment of departure from Poggibonsi to that moment when I saw, upon a background of pure green sky, the spear-like shafts, the rose-coloured walls and churches of Siena, I kept my eyes steadily towards my Mecca, speaking very little, taking no heed of the manner of our progress.  I had other sights than those to occupy me.  I saw hedge-flowers which Aurelia might have plucked, shade where she might have rested, orchards where she might have tasted fruit, wells which might have cooled her feet.  Some miles before I was in actual sight of my desired haven I was in a thrill and tension of expectancy, wrought upon me by these hopeful auguries, which I cannot describe.  I was in a perpetual tremble, my lips were dry.  We passed Castiglioncello; we rested for noonday at Monteriggione; at Castello del Diavolo, in full sight of all men, I kissed the stony road.  In my own country, I know very well, I should have been hooted as a madman, but here, where a man does what nature, or something higher, prompts him without shame or circumspection, I was never molested.  My companions were undoubtedly curious.  Pamfilo said that I was going to meet my amica at Siena; La Panormita supposed that I regretted some bouncing girl of Certaldo.  But I was soaring now to such a height that I cared nothing.  We entered the Porta Camollia at half-past five o’clock in the evening,