. When the supper became a debauch, the guests
began to sing, inspired by the Peralta and the Pedro-Ximenes. There
were fascinating duets, Calabrian ballads, Spanish _sequidillas_, and
Neapolitan _canzonettes_. Drunkenness was in all eyes, in the music,
in the hearts and voices of the guests. There was a sudden overflow of
bewitching vivacity, of cordial unconstraint, of Italian good nature,
of which no words can convey an idea to those who know only the evening
parties of Paris, the routs of London, or the clubs of Vienna. Jests
and words of love flew from side to side like bullets in a battle, amid
laughter, impieties, invocations to the Blessed Virgin or the _Bambino_.
One man lay on a sofa and fell asleep. A young woman listened to
a declaration, unconscious that she was spilling Xeres wine on
the tablecloth. Amid all this confusion La Zambinella, as if
terror-stricken, seemed lost in thought. She refused to drink, but ate
perhaps a little too much; but gluttony is attractive in women, it is
said. Sarrasine, admiring his mistress' modesty, indulged in serious
reflections concerning the future.

"'She desires to be married, I presume,' he said to himself.

"Thereupon he abandoned himself to blissful anticipations of marriage
with her. It seemed to him that his whole life would be too short to
exhaust the living spring of happiness which he found in the depths of
his heart. Vitagliani, who sat on his other side, filled his glass so
often that, about three in the morning, Sarrasine, while not absolutely
drunk, was powerless to resist his delirious passion. In a moment of
frenzy he seized the woman and carried her to a sort of boudoir which
opened from the salon, and toward which he had more than once turned his
eyes. The Italian was armed with a dagger.

"'If you come hear me,' she said, 'I shall be compelled to plunge this
blade into your heart. Go! you would despise me. I have conceived too
great a respect for your character to abandon myself to you thus. I do
not choose to destroy the sentiment with which you honor me.'

"'Ah!' said Sarrasine, 'to stimulate a passion is a poor way to
extinguish it! Are you already so corrupt that, being old in heart,
you act like a young prostitute who inflames the emotions in which she
trades?'

"'Why, this is Friday,' she replied, alarmed by the Frenchman's
violence.

"Sarrasine, who was not piously inclined, began to laugh. La Zambinella
gave a bound like a young deer, and