p. He kissed her, saying,
"Pardon."

"Keep it secret, you mean?" she retorted. "Yes, I pardon that wish of
yours. I can pardon much to my beauty."

She stood up as majestically as she had spoken.

"You know, my Violetta, that I am madly in love."

"I have learnt it."

"You know it:--what else would . . ? If I were not lost in love, could I
see you as I do and let Brescia be the final chapter?"

Violetta sighed. "I should have preferred its being so rather than this
superfluous additional line to announce an end, like a foolish staff on
the edge of a cliff. You thought that you were saluting a leper, or a
saint?"

"Neither. If ever we can talk together again, as we have done," Carlo
said gloomily, "I will tell you what I think of myself."

"No, but Richelieu might have behaved . . . . Ah! perhaps not quite in
the same way," she corrected her flowing apology for him. "But then, he
was a Frenchman. He could be flighty without losing his head. Dear
Italian Carlo! Yes, in the teeth of Barto Rizzo, and for the sake of the
country, marry her at once. It will be the best thing for you; really the
best. You want to know from me the whereabout of Barto Rizzo. He may be
in the mountain over Stresa, or in Milan. He also has thrown off my yoke,
such as it was! I do assure you, Carlo, I have no command over him: but,
mind, I half doat on the wretch. No man made me desperately in love with
myself before he saw me, when I stopped his raving in the middle of the
road with one look of my face. There was foam on his beard and round his
eyes; the poor wretch took out his handkerchief, and he sobbed. I don't
know how many luckless creatures he had killed on his way; but when I
took him into my carriage--king, emperor, orator on stilts, minister of
police not one has flattered me as he did, by just gazing at me. Beauty
can do as much as music, my Carlo."

Carlo thanked heaven that Violetta had no passion in her nature. She had
none: merely a leaning toward evil, a light sense of shame, a desire for
money, and in her heart a contempt for the principles she did not
possess, but which, apart from the intervention of other influences,
could occasionally sway her actions. Friendship, or rather the shadowy
recovery of a past attachment that had been more than friendship,
inclined her now and then to serve a master who failed distinctly to
represent her interests; and when she met Carlo after the close of the
war, she had really set to w