r so far to my husband's terrible
failing. So we shall all three wake till the dawn and take no rest, each
a prey to his own passion.

'But what is he really thinking of? Of what nature is his pain? What
would I not give, at this moment, to see him, to be able to gaze at him
till the day breaks, even if it were only through the window, in the
night dews, trembling, as I do now, from head to foot. The maddest,
wildest thoughts rush through my brain like flashes of lightning,
dazzling and confusing me. I feel the prompting of some evil spirit to
do some rash and irreparable thing, I feel as if I were treading on the
edge of perdition. It would, I feel, lift the great weight from my
heart, would take this suffocating knot from my throat if, at this
moment, I could cry aloud, into the silence of the night, with all the
strength of my soul--"I love him! I love him! I love him!"'

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

Two or three days after the departure of the Ferres, Sperelli and his
cousins returned to Rome, Donna Francesca, contrary to her custom,
wishing to shorten her stay at Schifanoja.

After a brief stay at Naples, Andrea reached Rome on the 24th of
October, a Sunday, in the first heavy morning rain of the Autumn season.
He experienced an extraordinary pleasure in returning to his apartments
in the Casa Zuccari, his tasteful and charming _buen retiro_. There he
seemed to find again some portion of himself, something he had missed.
Nothing was altered; everything about him retained, in his eyes, that
indescribable look of life which material objects assume, amongst which
one has lived and loved and suffered. His old servants, Jenny and
Terenzio, had taken the utmost care of everything, and Stephen had
attended to every detail likely to conduce to his master's comfort.

It was raining. Andrea went to the window and stood for some time
looking out upon his beloved Rome. The piazza of the Trinita de' Monti
was solitary and deserted, left to the guardianship of its obelisk. The
trees along the wall that joins the church to the Villa Medici, already
half stripped of their leaves, rustled mournfully in the wind and the
rain. The Pincio alone still shone green, like an island in a lake of
mist.

And as he gazed, one sentiment dominated all the others in his heart;
the sudden and lively re-awakening of his old love for Rome--fairest
Rome--that city of cities, immense, imperial, unique--like the sea, for
ever young, for