The slow-revolving wheel of Time brought me to the day before my strange wedding—­the eve of my remarriage with my own wife!  All the preparations were made—­nothing was left undone that could add to the splendor of the occasion.  For though the nuptial ceremony was to be somewhat quiet and private in character, and the marriage breakfast was to include only a few of our more intimate acquaintances, the proceedings were by no means to terminate tamely.  The romance of these remarkable espousals was not to find its conclusion in bathos.  No; the bloom and aroma of the interesting event were to be enjoyed in the evening, when a grand supper and ball, given by me, the happy and much-to-be-envied bridegroom, was to take place in the hotel which I had made my residence for so long.  No expense was spared for this, the last entertainment offered by me in my brilliant career as a successful Count Cesare Oliva.  After it, the dark curtain would fall on the played-out drama, never to rise again.

Everything that art, taste, and royal luxury could suggest was included in the arrangements for this brilliant ball, to which a hundred and fifty guests had been invited, not one of whom had refused to attend.

And now—­now, in the afternoon of this, the last of my self-imposed probation—­I sat alone with my fair wife in the drawing-room of the Villa Romani, conversing lightly on various subjects connected with the festivities of the coming morrow.  The long windows were open—­ the warm spring sunlight lay like a filmy veil of woven gold on the tender green of the young grass, birds sung for joy and flitted from branch to branch, now poising hoveringly above their nests, now soaring with all the luxury of perfect liberty into the high heaven of cloudless blue—­the great creamy buds of the magnolia looked ready to burst into wide and splendid flower between their large, darkly shining leaves, the odor of violets and primroses floated on every delicious breath of air, and round the wide veranda the climbing white china roses had already unfurled their little crumpled rosette-like blossoms to the balmy wind.  It was spring in Southern Italy—­spring in the land where, above all other lands, spring is lovely—­sudden and brilliant in its beauty as might be the smile of a happy angel.  Gran Dio!—­talk of angels!  Had I not a veritable angel for my companion at that moment?  What fair being, even in Mohammed’s Paradise of Houris, could outshine such charms as those which it was my proud privilege to gaze upon without rebuke—­ dark eyes, rippling golden hair, a dazzling and perfect face, a form to tempt the virtue of a Galahad, and lips that an emperor might long to touch—­in vain?  Well, no!—­not altogether in vain:  if his imperial majesty could offer a bribe large enough—­let us say a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg—­he might possibly purchase one, nay!—­perhaps two kisses from that seductive red mouth, sweeter than the ripest strawberry.  I glanced at her furtively from time to time when