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The Marchese Ludovico flattered himself, as people are apt to flatter themselves in similar cases, that his absence would be little noted, and that his reticence would suffice to leave all Ravenna in ignorance as to the errand on which he was bound when he left the Circolo.
No "bolgia" of the hell invented by the sombre imagination of the great poet could have surpassed, in torment, the Circolo ball-room on that last Carnival night to the Marchese Lamberto. The sight of the sorceress who had bewitched him, as he watched her in the dance, had once again scattered to the winds all resolution, all hope of the possibility of escaping from the toils.
The Conte Leandro Lombardoni, lady-killer, Don Juan, and poet, whose fortunes and misfortunes in these characters had made him the butt of the entire society, and had perhaps contributed, together with his well- known extraordinarily pronounced propensity for cramming himself with pastry, to give him the pale, puffed, pasty face, swelling around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him, the Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare palace as "Apollo," in a costume which young Ludovico Castelmare, the Marchese Lamberto's nephew, would insist on mistaking for that of Aesop; and had now, according to a programme perfectly well known previously throughout the city, come to the Circolo as "Dante."
"I had Stadione with me yesterday evening," said the Marchese, "and I wanted to speak to you about something he said. I was sorry to be told that you were not at the Circolo." "I was sorry that Beppo did not find me. What was it? Signor Ercole has succeeded in his mission, I hear." "Yes; and it was on that matter I wanted to speak to you; but this morning will do as well for that.
He would hate a dog that Don Paolo liked." "What nonsense!" exclaimed the girl. "It is something else. Papa sees something something that I do not see. He knows his own affairs, and perhaps he knows yours too, Tista. I have not forgotten the other evening." "I!" ejaculated the young man, looking up angrily. "You know very well where I was at the Circolo Artistico. How do you dare to think "
I happened to look round, and found standing beside me, looking up at me, wide-eyed and wondering, the page boy from the Circolo, whom I had harangued on the destiny of the world's youth, and afterwards tipped. The band was playing over and over again, at short intervals, God Save the King, the Marcia Reale, the Marseillaise, the Brabançonne and the Marcia degli Alpini.
If it is really true that he has contemplated being guilty of such a monstrous piece of injustice and folly," said the same man, who had before expressed a similar opinion. Just then a servant of the Circolo came into the room and put a note into the hands of the Baron Manutoli. "It is from Ludovico, asking me to go to him.
I have been out of the town. I am but this moment come back," replied Ludovico, evidently anxiously. "I should be glad to speak to you for a few minutes before you go to the Palazzo Castelmare. If you are going to the Circolo, I would walk with you, and we could speak there," said Fortini. "I'll be there in less than ten minutes.
He used to steal moments to come and enter into conversation with me when none of the older club servants were in sight. If any of them appeared in the distance, he used to pretend that I had called him for the purpose of ordering a drink, and bolt to the bar. On the 11th another presentation ceremony took place, this time at the Circolo.
Our friend the Conte Leandro, for instance, having determined to appear at the Circolo ball in the character of Dante which, for a poet at Ravenna, was a very proper and natural selection presented himself at the Palazzo Castelmare in that of Apollo an equally well-imagined presentation; had it not been that the happy intellectual analogy was less striking to the vulgar eye, than the remarkable exhibition of knock-knees and bow- legs resulting from the use of the "fleshings;" which constituted an indispensable portion of the god's attire.
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