Take him away, some of you,"
I bade my men, and in swift, silent obedience two of them stepped
forward and bore the groaning, sobbing fellow from the room. When
that was done "Host," I commanded, "prepare me a room. Attend me,
a couple of you."
I gave orders thereafter for the disposal of my baggage, some of
which my lacqueys brought up to the chamber that the landlord had
in haste made ready for me. In that chamber I sat until very late;
a prey to the utmost misery and despair. My rage being spent, I
might have taken some thought for poor Ganymede and his condition,
but my own affairs crowded over-heavily upon my mind, and sat the
undisputed rulers of my thoughts that night.
At one moment I considered journeying to Lavedan, only to dismiss
the idea the next. What could it avail me now? Would Roxalanne
believe the tale I had to tell? Would she not think, naturally
enough, that I was but making the best of the situation, and that
my avowal of the truth of a story which it was not in my power to
deny was not spontaneous, but forced from me by circumstances? No,
there was nothing more to be done. A score of amours had claimed
my attention in the past and received it; yet there was not one of
those affairs whose miscarriage would have afforded me the slightest
concern or mortification. It seemed like an irony, like a Dies ire,
that it should have been left to this first true passion of my life
to have gone awry.
I slept ill when at last I sought my bed, and through the night I
nursed my bitter grief, huddling to me the corpse of the love she
had borne me as a mother may the corpse of her first-born.
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