“Ah, do not think so ill of my gallantry.”
“Enough,” said the Prince, forcing a smile,
“I yield. Let me prove that I do not yield
ungraciously: will you honor me with your presence
at a little feast I propose to give on the royal birthday?”
“It is indeed a happiness to hear one command
of yours which I can obey.”
Zicci then turned the conversation, talked lightly
and gayly and soon afterwards departed.
“Villain,” then exclaimed the Prince,
grasping Mascari by the collar, “you have betrayed
me!”
“I assure your Excellency that the dice were
properly arranged,—he should have thrown
twelve; but he is the Devil, and that’s the end
of it.”
“There is no time to be lost,” said the
Prince, quitting hold of his parasite, who quietly
resettled his cravat.
“My blood is up! I will win this girl,
if I die for it. Who laughed? Mascari,
didst thou laugh?”
“I, your Excellency,—I laugh?”
“It sounded behind me,” said the Prince,
gazing round.
It was the day on which Zicci had told Glyndon that
he should ask for his decision in respect to Isabel,—the
third day since their last meeting. The Englishman
could not come to a resolution. Ambition, hitherto
the leading passion of his soul, could not yet be silenced
by love, and that love, such as it was, unreturned,
beset by suspicions and doubts which vanished in the
presence of Isabel, and returned when her bright face
shone on his eyes no more, for les absents ont toujours
tort. Perhaps had he been quite alone, his feelings
of honor, of compassion, of virtue, might have triumphed,
and he would have resolved either to fly from Isabel
or to offer the love that has no shame. But
Merton, cold, cautious, experienced, wary (such a nature
has ever power over the imaginative and the impassioned),
was at hand to ridicule the impression produced by
Zicci, and the notion of delicacy and honor towards
an Italian actress. It is true that Merton, who
was no profligate, advised him to quit all pursuit
of Isabel; but then the advice was precisely of that
character which, if it deadens love, stimulates passion.
By representing Isabel as one who sought to play a
part with him, he excused to Glyndon his own selfishness,—he
enlisted the Englishman’s vanity and pride on
the side of his pursuit. Why should not he beat
an adventuress at her own weapons?
Glyndon not only felt indisposed on that day to meet
Zicci, but he felt also a strong desire to defeat
the mysterious prophecy that the meeting should take
place. Into this wish Merton readily entered.
The young men agreed to be absent from Naples that
day. Early in the morning they mounted their
horses and took the road to Baiae. Glyndon left
word at his hotel that if Signor Zicci sought him,
it was in the neighborhood of the once celebrated
watering-place of the ancients that he should be found.
