Volume IV Part 41 (2/2)
”I cannot live at Naples, dearest, and you know that your daughter intended to leave with hter I see that you are still in love with her, and do not wish to be considered her father”
”Alas, yes! But I am sure that if I live with you my passion for her will be stilled, but otherwise I cannot answer forence than by her beauty I was sure that she loved me so well that I did not attempt to seduce her, lest thereby I should weaken my hold on her affections; and as I wanted to ed to possess her, but in a lawful hts should have been equal We have created an angel, Lucrezia, and I cannot iine how the duke ”
”The duke is completely ihter to his care?”
”Iht so ht possibly be able to explain that ranted that the poor duke will die a virgin in spite of himself; and he knows that as well as anybody”
”Do not let us say any more about it, but allow me to treat you as at Tivoli”
”Not just now, as I hear carriage wheels”
A hed heartily to see herus with kisses
The duke caether very htto pass the night honourably with ht, for I was so at that moment
As soon as the worthy man left us ent to bed, but here I ht I have ever spent If I told all I should wound chaste ears, and, besides, all the colours of the painter and all the phrases of the poet could not do justice to the delirium of pleasure, the ecstasy, and the license which passed during that night, while tax lights burnt dimly on the table like candles before the shrine of a saint
We did not leave the stage, which I watered withafter the sun had risen We were scarcely dressed when the duke arrived
Leonilda gave him a vivid description of our nocturnal labours, but in his unhappy state of impotence he must have been thankful for his absence
I was determined to start the next day so as to be at Roed the duke to let ive Leonilda the five thousand ducats which would have been her dower if she had becohter,” said he, ”she can and ought to take this present from her father, if only as a dowry for her future husband”
”Will you accept it, then,me, ”on the condition that you will proain as soon as you hear of e”
I pro to-morrow,” said the duke, ”I shall ask all the nobility of Naples to meet you at supper In the hter; we shall see each other again at suppertihter in the best of spirits I spent al within the bounds of decency, less, perhaps, out of respect to ht before We did not kiss each other till the hter were grieved to lose me
After a careful toilette I went to supper, and found an assembly of a hundred of the very best people in Naples The duchess was very agreeable, and when I kissed her hand to take leave, she said,
”I hope, Don Giaco your short stay at Naples, and that you will sometimes think of your visit with pleasure”
I answered that I could only recall ht after the kindness hich she had deigned to treat ; and, in fact, my recollections of Naples were always of the happiest description
After I had treated the duke's attendants with generosity, the poor nobleman, whom fortune had favoured, and whom nature had deprived of the sweetest of all enjoye and I went on my way
CHAPTER X