my
dear, and go by contraries. They will not find the pattern of the carpet
so interesting as you should do. Give them prose for their poetry,
vinegar for their sweet wine, bitter herbs when they look to you for
cane of sugar. Keep your honeycomb for him who is trying to earn it.
Think where I am going, my Bellaroba! To what temptations, blessed
Lord! to what askings, to what suggestion of wanton dealing! Remember
that in all this I shall have your honour to keep, as you have mine. Say
a great many prayers, my little heart, for the welfare of my soul and of
yours; lock your door at night; let Monna Matura go with you to mass and
confession; and--and--oh! my wife, my little wife, but I love not the
leaving of you!" And so these poor children cried on each other's
breasts, and so fell to the unspoken tongue of Love's elect. Next
morning he went early, leaving her kissed in bed.

He saw her once again, spent a most blissful two hours in her company,
before the Countess Lionella took it into her head to shelter from the
summer heats in a villa she had above Monselice. Thither Angioletto was
forced to go in her train. He found it intolerable, went with a heart of
lead; for so cheerful a soul he was what he looked, parched and wan.
This lasted a week. Then came a paper, scrawled with brown ink marks,
which, after much study, he took to imply--

"MY LOVE ANGILETO, I love you more every day. I cry a good deal for
lack of you. I kiss you two hundred times, and will be good and
happy,
"Your dutiful BELAROBA."

This revived him amazingly: he went singing about the gardens which hung
upon the side of the grey hill, and composed a pastoral comedy to be
acted by the Countess's ladies in the Temple grove.

Lionella very openly and without afterthought made love to him. He was a
charming little lad, it is true; but quite apart from that, he was the
only male creature above servant rank in the household. I describe him
so because I cannot bring myself to call him a man; but he was quite man
enough for the lady's intent. It is a surprising instance of the tact
there was innate in the youth that he checked every undue liberty on the
part of his mistress without endangering her self-respect or his own
high favour. Perhaps he allowed matters to go a little too far. His were
times of artless Art and of franchise--immoral, yet mainly innocent.
Children call each other pet nam