And
still the perfume from the pink paper rose to his nostrils, and
seemed to his fancy as though it were a poison that he had neither
the power nor the will to defend himself from.
He had put the little pink note down on the table where the two
other letters were, and sat looking at the three. They were
manifestly, fatally incompatible. Either the two big letters must be
thrown to the winds--they and their contents for ever--together with
all thought of honours, high social standing, and admiring respect
of the world; or the little pink note must be crushed at once and
for ever, and its writer--ah!--made to understand, to begin with,
that the Marchese di Castelmare did not know his own mind; that his
offer and his plighted word were not to be trusted;
The letters lying there on the table before him, as he sat gazing at
them almost without the power of anything that merited to be called
thought, represented themselves to his fancy as living agencies of
contrasted qualities and powers. The two large missives from his
ecclesiastical friends were creditable and useful steeds; harmless,
wholesome in blood and nature, big and pacific, apt for service, and
good for drawing him on to honour, success, and prosperity. The
little pink note was a scorpion with a power a thousand-fold
greater, for its size--a sharp, venomous, noxious power, stinging to
the death, yet imparting with its sting a terrible, a fatal delight,
an acrid fierce pleasure, which once tasted could not by any mortal
strength of resolution be dashed away from the lips.
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