Here he sat down on a stone, and I, sitting opposite to him,
saw the old man's hair gleaming like threads of silver in the
moonlight. The stillness was scarcely troubled by the sound of the
far-off thunder of traffic along the boulevards; the clear night air
and everything about us combined to make a strangely unreal scene.
"You talk of millions to a young man," I began, "and do you think that
he will shrink from enduring any number of hardships to gain them? Are
you not laughing at me?"
"May I die unshriven," he cried vehemently, "if all that I am about to
tell you is not true. I was one-and-twenty years old, like you at this
moment. I was rich, I was handsome, and a noble by birth. I began with
the first madness of all--with Love. I loved as no one can love
nowadays. I have hidden myself in a chest, at the risk of a dagger
thrust, for nothing more than the promise of a kiss. To die for Her
--it seemed to me to be a whole life in itself. In 1760 I fell in love
with a lady of the Vendramin family; she was eighteen years old, and
married to a Sagredo, one of the richest senators, a man of thirty,
madly in love with his wife. My mistress and I were guiltless as
cherubs when the _sposo_ caught us together talking of love. He was
armed, I was not, but he missed me; I sprang upon him and killed him
with my two hands, wringing his neck as if he had been a chicken.
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