mself to be possessing a beautiful young woman whom he
adored. He recalled how next day, in a shameless letter, she had derided
him for the mistake that she had so greatly desired him to make and
that she had compassed with such infamous cunning. He shuddered at the
thought. It was the last thing he would have wished to think of just
now, and he drove the detestable image from his mind.

It must be midnight! How long was he to stand shivering there? Waiting
in vain, perhaps? Cheated, after all? Two thousand ducats for nothing.
Lorenzi behind the curtain, mocking at the fool outside!

Involuntarily he gripped the hilt of the sword he carried beneath the
cloak, pressed to his naked body. After all, with a fellow like Lorenzi
one must be prepared for any tricks.

At that instant he heard a gentle rattling, and knew it was made by the
grating of Marcolina's window hi opening. Then both wings of the window
were drawn back, though the curtain still veiled the interior. Casanova
remained motionless for a few seconds more, until the curtain was pulled
aside by an unseen hand. Taking this as a sign, he swung himself over
the sill into the room, and promptly closed window and grating behind
him. The curtain had fallen across his shoulders, so that he had to push
his way beneath it. Now he would have been in absolute darkness had
there not been shining from the depths of the distance, incredibly far
away, as if awakened by his own gaze, the faintest possible illumination
to show him the way. No more than three paces forward, and eager arms
enfolded him. Letting the sword slip from his hand, the cloak from his
shoulders, he gave himself up to his bliss.

From Marcolina's sigh of surrender, from the tears of happiness which
he kissed from her cheeks, from the ever-renewed warmth with which she
received his caresses, he felt sure that she shared his rapture; and
to him this rapture seemed more intense than he had ever experienced,
seemed to possess a new and strange quality. Pleasure became worship;
passion was transfused with an intense consciousness. Here at last was
the reality which he had often falsely imagined himself to be on the
point of attaining, and which had always eluded his grasp. He held in
his arms a woman upon whom he could squander himself, with whom he could
feel himself inexhaustible; the woman upon whose breast the moment of
ultimate self-abandonment and of renewed desire seemed to coalesce into
a single insta