The step he had
determined to take gives the measure of his eagerness in the pursuit
of her--of his conviction that he could not live without her; and
the object of this great, this intense, this all-mastering passion
had been snatched away from him; the unappeasable agony of such a
bereavement can, perhaps, only be adequately measured by those who
have felt it.
Then all the evils which, despite his shrinking from them, he had
faced for the sake of gratifying this imperious passion, had fallen
upon him as fatally of though the price of his facing them had been
paid to him. All the loss of credit, of respect, of social station,
which he had found it so dreadful to contemplate, had been incurred-
-and for nothing. How long and terrible had been the struggle, which
of those two incompatible, objects of his intense desire--Bianca, or
the social position he held in the eyes of his fellow-citizens--he
should sacrifice to the other; it had seemed to him so impossible to
give up either that the necessity of choosing between them had
almost unhinged his reason. And now he was doomed to forego them
both.
Then, again, Ludovico, and the dreadful position in which he stood!
and, if he were condemned, on whose head would fall the blame of the
disgrace which would thus overwhelm the family name? If his nephew
were held to be guilty of this crime, would not all the odium of
having driven him to it fall on him?
Truly there was wherewithal to bow down a stronger heart and head
than those of the Marchese Lamberto.
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