lasped in one another's the
first evening of our betrothal. I was quite incapable of thought; every
feeling even of love or of hate seemed paralyzed within me and all
vitality to have ceased, as the movement of a watch stops when a blow
has broken the spring. After a long pause I recovered my composure
sufficiently to ask when the marriage was to take place. "This
afternoon," replied the old man in a timid voice. Then I started up,
brought to my senses by the nearness of this fearful and decisive
event. Old Fabio seized my hands, and looked anxiously into my face.

"Merciful heavens!" he exclaimed, "what are you doing. You know not how
powerful they are. If you were to appear openly in the streets, who
knows whether you would outlive the night."

"I will go in disguise, I will stand face to face with this scoundrel,
and tell him that one of us must die. You surely have a pair of
trooper's pistols in good condition. They are all I shall want. Leave
me now."

"First you must shoot me with them," he said, and clung so firmly to my
arm, that I saw no possibility of freeing myself from his grasp without
using force. "Think of Bicetta," he continued, "what would she say to
it." "You are right," I replied, and felt as if I were again deprived
of all energy. "I know not what she would say, but I _will_ know, or I
shall go mad. Let go my arm, and give me my hat. I will go to her; I
will burst open the doors which keep her from me, and when once I have
seen her then come what may."

But he would not let me go. He led me back to my chair and said, "you
must surely be persuaded that no one so sincerely desires yours, and
the Signorina's, and the old general's welfare as old Fabio, so you
must listen to his advice, and not rush headlong to your own
destruction. If you imagine that you can reach her apartment, you are
greatly mistaken. The house is filled with servants on account of the
wedding, and you would fare ill if you desired to see the bride with
this face. Let me go to her; they cannot forbid me the entrance,
although the Signora does not regard me with favourable eyes. If it
should come to the worst, I can always send for my daughter; so if you
will write a few lines I promise to deliver them, and they will
certainly reach their destination with more safety than by the papal
posts. Sit down here by this window and write a few lines and if I am
not greatly mistaken in our Bicetta she will answer them. He ran to
fetch me