human
If it were not so entirely impossible, I should think you were jealous, my little Paolina. If I were to--what shall we say?--if I were to set out on a journey with la Diva, tete-a-tete, to travel from here to Rome, should you be jealous?
gpt
With La Bianca?
human
Yes! with La Bianca.
gpt
I don't know. I don't think that I should in earnest. I know in my inmost heart, my own love, that you love me truly and entirely; I feel it, I am sure of it. But all the same, I should rather that you did not travel from here to Rome alone with La Lalli.
human
That means that, to a certain degree, you are jealous, little one. Do you think I should be uneasy if you were called on to travel under the escort, for example, of our friend the Conte Leandro?
gpt
The Conte Leandro! cried Paolina, laughing,
human
I am sure you ought to be uneasy at the bare thought of such a thing, for you know how terrible it would be to me. But is it quite the same thing, amico mio? La Lalli is indisputably a very beautiful woman; and the Conte Leandro is--the Conte Leandro. But it is not that she is beautiful. I don't know what it is. There is something about her--ecco, I should not the least mind now your travelling to the world's end, or being occupied in any other way, with the Contessa Violante.
gpt
She is not a beautiful woman, certainly.
human
She is, at all events, fifty times more pleasing-looking, as well as more attractive in every way, than the Conte Leandro. But that is not what makes the difference. I take it, the difference is, that one feels that the Contessa Violante is good, and that nobody would get anything but good from her. I have got quite to love her myself.
gpt
And yet you see, Paolina mia, somehow or other it came to pass that I could not love her, when I was bid to do so; and, in the place of doing that, I went and loved somebody else instead. How is that to be accounted for, eh?
human
I am sure that is more than I can guess, Ludovico.
gpt
One thing is clear--and a very good thing it is--that Violante has no more desire to marry me than I have to marry her. As soon as ever Carnival is over, my own darling, I mean to speak definitively to my uncle, and tell him, in the first place, that he must give up all notion of a marriage between Violante and me.
human
As soon as Carnival is over. Why, that will be the day after to-morrow,
gpt
Exactly so; the day after to-morrow. But I mean only to tell him, in the first instance, that I cannot make the marriage he would have me. Then, when that is settled--and some little time allowed for him to get over his mortification, il povero zio--will come the announcement of the marriage I can make. I have quite fixed with myself to do it the day after to-morrow. But--I don't know what to make of my uncle. He is not in the least like himself. I am afraid he must be ill. I fully expected that I should have to fight all through Carnival against constant exhortations to pay my court to the Contessa. But he has never spoken to me a word on the subject.
human
Perhaps he has discovered that the lady likes the proposal no better than you do,
gpt
No; it's not that. He never dreams of her having any will in the matter apart from that of her family. I can't make him out. There's something wrong with him. He looks a dozen years older than he did; and his habits are changed too.
human
Do you think--that is--it has just come into my head--do you remember, Ludovico, what I said to you last night at the theatre about the way La Lalli sung her love verses at him?
gpt
La Lalli again. Why, she has fascinated you at all events. You can think of nothing else. La Lalli and lo zio. Dio mio! If you only knew him. All the prime donne in Europe might sing at him, or make eyes at him, or make love to him, in any manner they liked from morning till night without making any more impression on him than a hundred years, more or less, on the tomb of the Emperor Theodoric out there. No, anima mia, that's not it. No, il povero zio, I am more inclined to think that he is breaking up. It does happen, sometimes, that your men, who have never known a day's illness in their lives, break down all of a sudden in that way. Everybody in the city has been saying that he is changed and ill. But I must be off, my darling. I only came to tell you that all was in readiness for you at St. Apollinare. At least that was my excuse for coming. But now I must go and see about all sorts of things for the reception to-night. We shall have all the world at the Palazzo to-night. And lo zio asked me to see to everything. Addio, Paolina mia. You know where my heart will be all the time. Addio, anima mia.