child, pitiably nervous, imperfectly educated,
and half paralysed by the recent death of his mother and the earlier one
of a _fiancee_. The inn is good to eat in (or rather out of), but for
nothing else; and Salvator, hearing of Lucrezia, whose friend, though
not her lover, he has formerly been, determines to ask a hospitality
which she very cheerfully gives them. _Cetera quis nescit_, as George
Sand herself in other but often-repeated words admits.[187] Karol falls
in love at first sight, though he is horrified at his hostess's past. He
also falls ill, and she nurses him. Salvator leaves them for a time,
and though Lucrezia plays quite the reverse of the part of temptress,
the inevitable does not fail to happen.

That they were _not_ married and that they did _not_ live happy ever
after, everybody will of course be certain, though it is not Karol's
fault that actual marriage does not take place. There is, however, an
almost literal, if unsanctified and irregular honeymoon; but long before
Salvator's[188] return, it has "reddened" more than ominously. Karol is
insanely jealous, and it may be admitted that a more manly and less
childishly selfish creature might be somewhat upset by the arrival of
Lucrezia's last lover, the father of her youngest child, though it is
quite evident that she has not a spark of love for this one left. But he
is also jealous of Salvator; of an old artist named Beccaferri whom she
assists; of a bagman who calls to sell to her eldest boy a gun; of the
aged peasant whom she had refused to marry, but whose death-bed she
visits; of the _cure_; of everybody. And his jealousy takes the form not
merely of rage, which is bad enough for Lucrezia's desire of peace, but
of cold insult, which revolts her never extinguished independence and
pride. He has, as noted, begged her to marry him in the time of
intoxication, but she has refused, and persists in the refusal. After
one or two "scenes" she rows herself over to an olive wood on the other
side of the lake, and makes it a kind of "place of sacrifice"--of the
sacrifice, that is to say, of all hopes of happiness with him or any one
thenceforward. But she neither dismisses nor leaves him; on the
contrary, they live together, unmarried, but with no public scandal, for
ten years, his own passion for her in its peculiar kind never ceasing,
while hers gradually dies under the stress of the various torments he
inflicts, unintentionally if not quite unconsciously