“It may interest you to know that the Duchessa d’Astrardente is going to her castle in the Sabines on the day after to-morrow.”

This laconic epistle Del Ferice carefully directed to Don Giovanni Saracinesca at his palace, and fastened a stamp upon it; but he concealed the address from Temistocle.  The second letter was longer, and written in his own small and ornate handwriting.  It was to Donna Tullia Mayer.  It ran thus:—­

“You would forgive my importuning you with a letter, most charming Donna Tullia, if you could conceive of my desolation and loneliness.  For more than three weeks I have been entirely deprived of the pleasure, the exquisite delight, of conversing with her for whom I have suffered.  I still suffer so much.  Ah! if my paper were a cloth of gold, and my pen in moving traced characters of diamond and pearl, yet any words which speak of you would be ineffectually honoured by such transcription!  In the miserable days and nights I have passed between life and death, it is your image which has consoled me, the echo of your delicate voice which has soothed my pain, the remembrance of the last hours I spent with you which has gilded the feverish dreams of my sickness.  You are the guardian angel of a most unhappy man, Donna Tullia.  Do you know it?  But for you I would have wooed death as a comforter.  As it is, I have struggled desperately to keep my grasp upon life, in the hope of once more seeing your smile and hearing your happy laugh; perhaps—­I dare not expect it—­I may receive from you some slight word of sympathy, some little half-sighed hint that you do not altogether regret having been in these long weeks the unconscious comforter of my sorrowing spirit and tormented body.  You would hardly know me, could you see me; but saving for your sweet spiritual presence, which has rescued me from the jaws of death, you would never have seen me again.  Is it presumption in me to write thus?  Have you ever given me a right to speak in these words?  I do not know.  I do not care.  Man has a right to be grateful.  It is the first and most divine right I possess, to feel and to express my gratitude.  For out of the store of your kindness shown me when I was in the world, strong and happy in the privilege of your society, I have drawn healing medicine in my sickness, as tormented souls in purgatory get refreshment from the prayers of good and kind people who remember them on earth.  So, therefore, if I have said too much, forgive me, forgive the heartfelt gratitude which prompts me; and believe still in the respectful and undying devotion of the humblest of your servants, UGO DEL FERICE.”