In order to run no further risk of losing the mysterious liquid the skeptical Don Juan replaced it in the drawer of the little Gothic table.  At this solemn moment he heard a tumult in the corridor.  There were confused voices, stifled laughter, light footsteps, the rustle of silk, in short, the noise of a merry troop trying to collect itself in some sort of order.  The door opened and the prince, the seven women, the friends of Don Juan and the singers, appeared, in the fantastic disorder of dancers overtaken by the morning, when the sun disputes the paling light of the candles.  They came to offer the young heir the conventional condolences.

“Oh, oh, is poor Don Juan really taking this death seriously?” said the prince in la Brambilla’s ear.

“Well, his father was a very good man,” she replied.

Nevertheless, Don Juan’s nocturnal meditations had printed so striking an expression upon his face that it commanded silence.  The men stopped, motionless.  The women, whose lips had been parched with wine, threw themselves on their knees and began to pray.  Don Juan could not help shuddering as he saw this splendor, this joy, laughter, song, beauty, life personified, doing homage thus to Death.  But in this adorable Italy religion and revelry were on such good terms that religion was a sort of debauch and debauch religion.  The prince pressed Don Juan’s hand affectionately, then all the figures having given expression to the same look, half-sympathy, half-indifference, the phantasmagoria disappeared, leaving the chamber empty.  It was, indeed, a faithful image of life!  Going down the stairs the prince said to la Rivabarella: 

“Heigho! who would have thought Don Juan a mere boaster of impiety?  He loved his father, after all!”

“Did you notice the black dog?” asked la Brambilla.

“He is immensely rich now,” sighed Bianca Cavatolini.

“What is that to me?” cried the proud Veronese, she who had broken the comfit dish.

“What is that to you?” exclaimed the duke.  “With his ducats he is as much a prince as I am!”

At first Don Juan, swayed by a thousand thoughts, wavered toward many different resolutions.  After having ascertained the amount of the wealth amassed by his father, he returned in the evening to the death chamber, his soul puffed up with a horrible egoism.  In the apartment he found all the servants of the household busied in collecting the ornaments for the bed of state on which “feu monseigneur” would lie to-morrow—­a curious spectacle which all Ferrara would come to admire.  Don Juan made a sign and the servants stopped at once, speechless and trembling.

“Leave me alone,” he said in an altered voice, “and do not return until I go out again.”

When the steps of the old servant, who was the last to leave, had died away on the stone flooring, Don Juan locked the door hastily, and, sure that he was alone, exclaimed: