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Updated: May 17, 2025
They all returned to the drawing-room and then Del Ferice, without any remark, led Orsino away to smoke with him in a distant apartment. "We can smoke again, when we go back," he said. "My wife does not mind and Madame d'Aranjuez likes it. But it is an excuse to be alone together for a little while, and besides, my doctor makes me lie down for a quarter of an hour after dinner.
I do not interfere now. As I said then, follow her if you please, persuade her to marry you if you can, quarrel with all your family if you like. It is nothing to me. Publish the banns of your marriage on the doors of the Capitol and declare to the whole world that Madame d'Aranjuez, the future Princess Saracinesca, is the daughter of Count Spicca and Lucrezia Ferris, his lawful wife.
Orsino could not help wondering what the tie between him and Madame d'Aranjuez could be, for it evidently had the power to make Spicca submit without complaint to something worse than ordinary unkindness and to make him defend on all occasions the name and character of the woman who treated him so harshly. It must be a very close bond, Orsino thought.
Madame d'Aranjuez has just written to you, and you have her letter in your pocket. She has told you in that letter a number of facts in her own life, as she sees them, and you look at them as she does. It is natural. To her and to you, I appear to be a monster of evil, a hideous incarnation of cruelty, a devil in short. Did she call me a devil in her letter?" "She did." "Precisely.
Maria Consuelo might indeed have been seen once with Donna Tullia, and might have gone once to the latter's day. That was bad enough, but might be remedied by tact and decision in her subsequent conduct. But there was no salvation possible after a person had been advertised in the daily paper as Madame d'Aranjuez had been. Orsino was very angry.
The old man's voice grew suddenly clear and incisive, and Orsino broke off in the middle of his sentence. A moment's pause followed. "I requested you to stop speaking," Spicca resumed, "because you were unconsciously making statements which have no foundation whatever in fact. Observe that I say, unconsciously. You are completely mistaken. I do not hate Madame d'Aranjuez.
Orsino raised his head angrily. "Do you mean me to doubt that Madame d'Aranjuez speaks the truth?" he asked. "Calm yourself. Whatever Madame d'Aranjuez has written to you, she believes to be true. But she may have been herself deceived." "In spite of documents public registers " "Ah! Then she has told you about those certificates?" "That and a great deal more which concerns you." "Precisely.
"Everything," answered Orsino. "I love Madame d'Aranjuez, she loves me, she absolutely refuses to marry me and she is going to Paris at a quarter to ten. I know she is your daughter and I want you to prevent her from leaving. That is all, I believe."
His last remark was to the effect that she was eccentric. After a long silence, during which Orsino hoped that his friend would say something more, he took up the point. "I wish I knew what you meant by eccentric," he said. "I had the advantage of seeing Madame d'Aranjuez frequently, and I did not notice any eccentricity about her." "Ah perhaps you are not observant.
Yet you refused to tell me who Madame d'Aranjuez was, when I asked you, the other day. I do not even know her father's name, much less her mother's " "No," answered Spicca. "That is quite true, and I see no necessity for telling you either. But, as you say, you have some right to ask. I will tell you this much.
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