Suddenly both of them heard one o'clock strike from the neighbouring
church. To the Marchese it was a knell which, with horrid warning-
note, dragged him forcibly back from his Circean dalliance to the
thoughts, the things, and the people whose incompatibility with the
possibility of such dalliance was driving him mad. It was the hour
at which he had promised to wait upon the Cardinal. It was
absolutely necessary that he should go at once; and he tore himself
away from that fatal sofa-seat with a wrench, and a reflection on
the purpose of his visit to the Legate, which seemed to him really
to threaten to disturb his reason.
Slinkingly he stole from the house in the Strada di Porta Sisi, and
hurried to the Cardinal's palace. His mind seemed to reel, and a
cold sweat broke out all over him as he rang the bell at the top of
the great stone stair of the Legate's dwelling.
This business that he was now here for--those high honours which
were about to be lavished upon him--would they not all make his
position so much the worse? The higher he stood, would not his fall
be the more terrible? What would be said or thought of him? At Rome,
immediately after the high distinction shown him, what would they
not say? Here, in Ravenna, how should he look his fellow-citizens in
the face? Impossible, impossible.
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