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Updated: June 5, 2025
In his effort to control his features, the blood rushed to his forehead, and his hand trembled violently. His father saw it, but made no remark. "Poor Astrardente!" he said. "He was not so bad as people thought him." "No," replied Giovanni, with a great effort; "he was a very good man." "I should hardly say that," returned his father, with a grim smile of amusement.
He talks about tunnelling the mountains for my aqueduct, as though it were no more trouble than to run a stick through a piece of paper." "Your aqueduct, indeed!" exclaimed his father. "I would like to know whose idea it was?" "I hear you are working like an engineer yourself, Don Giovanni," said Corona. "I have a man at work at Astrardente on some plans of roads.
She is the most beautiful woman in Rome. She is one of the best women I know. She will have a sufficient jointure. Marry her. You will never be happy with a silly little girl just out of a convent You are not that sort of man. The Astrardente is not three-and-twenty, but she has had five years of the world, and she has stood the test well. I shall be proud to call her my daughter."
The Duchess of Astrardente was not more cold to her admirers than Gloria was. It was not that. There were little things, little nothings, but in thousands. He tried to please her with something, and she laughed in his face, or found fault. She had small hardnesses and little vulgarities of manner that drove him mad. "I had thought her like you," he said suddenly, turning to Francesca. "She is not.
No one had believed that Astrardente could ever die, that the day would ever come when society should know his place no more; and with one consent everybody sent their carriages to the funeral, and went themselves a day or two later to the great requiem Mass in the parish church.
He had faithfully kept the promise he had made in his heart, that since he was so unfortunate as to love the wife of another a woman of such nobility that even in Rome no breath had been breathed against her he would keep his unfortunate passion to himself. Astrardente was old, almost decrepit, in spite of his magnificent wig; Corona was but two-and-twenty years of age.
It had amused him to annoy Astrardente a little, and he left him with the pleasant consciousness of having excited the inquisitive faculty of his friend to its highest pitch, without giving it anything to feed upon. Men who have to do with men, rather than with things, frequently take a profound and seemingly cruel delight in playing upon the feelings and petty vanities of their fellow-creatures.
"Yes," said the diplomatist, "Spicca is a living memento mori; he occasionally reminds men of death by killing them." "How horrible!" exclaimed Corona. "Ah, my dear lady, the world is full of horrible things." "That is not a reason for making jests of them." "It is better to make light of the inevitable," said Astrardente. "Are you ready to go home, my dear?"
In his excitement Giovanni sprang from his seat, and rushing to his father's side, threw his arms round his neck and embraced him. He had never done such a thing in his life. Then he remained standing, and grew suddenly thoughtful. "It is heartless of us to talk in this way," he said. "The poor man is not buried yet." "My dear boy," said the old Prince, "Astrardente is dead.
As for the deliberate insult he had received, it was undoubtedly very shocking to be told that one lied in such very plain terms; but on the other hand, to demand satisfaction of such an old wreck as Astrardente would be ridiculous in the extreme.
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