“I would hold you tighter against my bosom, and set him at defiance.  In your arms Lucrezia is safe.  Look! the spirit is going away.  Quick, quick!  He is warning us of the approach of some profane person, and tells us to seek some other retreat to renew our pleasures.  Let us go.”

We rose and slowly advanced towards Donna Cecilia and the advocate, who were just emerging from a neighbouring alley.  Without avoiding them, and without hurrying, just as if to meet one another was a very natural occurrence, I enquired of Donna Cecilia whether her daughter had any fear of serpents.

“In spite of all her strength of mind,” she answered, “she is dreadfully afraid of thunder, and she will scream with terror at the sight of the smallest snake.  There are some here, but she need not be frightened, for they are not venomous”

I was speechless with astonishment, for I discovered that I had just witnessed a wonderful love miracle.  At that moment the children came up, and, without ceremony, we again parted company.

“Tell me, wonderful being, bewitching woman, what would you have done if, instead of your pretty serpent, you had seen your husband and your mother?”

“Nothing.  Do you not know that, in moments of such rapture, lovers see and feel nothing but love?  Do you doubt having possessed me wholly, entirely?”

Lucrezia, in speaking thus, was not composing a poetical ode; she was not feigning fictitious sentiments; her looks, the sound of her voice, were truth itself!

“Are you certain,” I enquired, “that we are not suspected?”

“My husband does not believe us to be in love with each other, or else he does not mind such trifling pleasures as youth is generally wont to indulge in.  My mother is a clever woman, and perhaps she suspects the truth, but she is aware that it is no longer any concern of hers.  As to my sister, she must know everything, for she cannot have forgotten the broken-down bed; but she is prudent, and besides, she has taken it into her head to pity me.  She has no conception of the nature of my feelings towards you.  If I had not met you, my beloved, I should probably have gone through life without realizing such feelings myself; for what I feel for my husband.... well, I have for him the obedience which my position as a wife imposes upon me.”

“And yet he is most happy, and I envy him!  He can clasp in his arms all your lovely person whenever he likes!  There is no hateful veil to hide any of your charms from his gaze.”

“Oh! where art thou, my dear serpent?  Come to us, come and protect us against the surprise of the uninitiated, and this very instant I fulfil all the wishes of him I adore!”

We passed the morning in repeating that we loved each other, and in exchanging over and over again substantial proofs of our mutual passion.