comedy, the beloved of Aminta and the Pastor Fido.  I own that I was dismayed, wounded in my tenderest part, at the discovery.  Aurelia had suddenly become a stranger to my heart.  I was nothing, less than nothing, to her now that she was alone with her husband.  Beside the care of his appetite for food, my labours upon Guicciardini—­the toil of a month of nights—­was as the work of an ant in the dust.  Beside her interest in his gossip of the schools, the coffee-house, the street corner, my exposition of the Sonnets of Petrarca was as the babble of school children at play in the Pra; beside her attentions to his clumsy caresses, her tenderness to me hour after hour was but the benevolence of a kindly woman to a lad left on her hands.  Oh, bitter tonic discovery!  How bitter it was I leave my reader to determine.  I do not feel equal to the task of relating all that I overheard; if I could have stopped my ears, I would have done it.  She tempted him, beguiled him to eat, to praise her, to be at ease, to love her.  With that liquid tongue of hers, which would have melted a flinty core, she talked of his and her affairs; she was interested in his commentary upon the Pandects, she was indignant at the jealousy of Dr. This, she made light of the malice of Professor That.  With flying feet from table to kitchen and back, with dexterous hands at bottle, platter or napkin, she ministered to his slightest whims.  She refused to allow Nonna to wait upon him; she must do everything for him for this once.

And when, amid his flung ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his “Non c’e male,” his “Buono, buono!” his “Ancora un po’,” or “Dammi da here,” he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice I heard her reply, “It is because—­it is because—­I have not always been good to you, Porfirio.  It is because—­of late—­this evening—­I have much wished for you to be here.  It is because—–­”

“Cospetto!” I heard the doctor cry, “what is the meaning of this?  Come here, my dear.”  And then, when she went to him and sat upon his knee, I heard him murmur his endearments—­ah, and I heard her soft and broken replies!  And I knew very well that in her heart she was reproaching herself for what I alone had done, and by her humble appeal for kindness was craving his forgiveness for offences for which I could never hope to be forgiven.

These terrible discoveries, far from making me cease to love Aurelia, increased incalculably while they changed and purged my love.  Pity and terror, says Aristotle in his Poetics, are the soul’s cathartics.  Both of these I felt, and emerged the cleaner.  By the tune Aurelia had coaxed her husband to come to bed, and had gone thither, with a kiss, herself, I was half way to a great resolve, which, though it resulted in untold misery of body, was actually, as I verily believe, the means of my soul’s salvation.  Without ceasing for a moment to love Aurelia, I now loved her honestly again.  I could see her a wife, I could know her a loving wife, without one unworthy thought; I could gain glory from what was her glory, I could be enthusiastic upon those virtues in her which to a selfish lover would have been the destruction of his hopes.  In a word, I loved her now because she loved another.