"But Emilio," he went on to himself, "is but three and twenty. He is a
better man than Lord Wellington with the gout, than the paralyzed
Regent, than the epileptic royal family of Austria, than the King of
France----"
But as he thought of the King of France Emilio's brow was knit, his
ivory skin burned yellower, tears gathered in his black eyes and hung
to his long lashes; he raised a hand worthy to be painted by Titian to
push back his thick brown hair, and gazed again at Massimilla's
gondola.
"And this insolent mockery of fate is carried even into my love
affair," said he to himself. "My heart and imagination are full of
precious gifts; Massimilla will have none of them; she is a
Florentine, and she will throw me over. I have to sit by her side like
ice, while her voice and her looks fire me with heavenly sensations!
As I watch her gondola a few hundred feet away from my own I feel as
if a hot iron were set on my heart. An invisible fluid courses through
my frame and scorches my nerves, a cloud dims my sight, the air seems
to me to glow as it did at Rivalta when the sunlight came through a
red silk blind, and I, without her knowing it, could admire her lost
in dreams, with her subtle smile like that of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
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