M. de Malipiero eyed me across the table.
"You look merry," he said, "but you've the eyes of a man who hasn't slept."
I only smiled and let him believe whatever story he preferred.
The next evening, I paid a visit to Madame Orio. Angela wasn't there.
Freed from her shadow, I stayed for supper and retired with M. Rosa.
As I took my leave, Nanette brushed my sleeve and slipped something into my hand, a letter and a small parcel.
Back in my room, I unwrapped it: a lump of wax bearing the stamp of a key.
Her letter explained the rest.
I was to have a copy made; the house would be open to me whenever I wished.
Angela, she added, had slept with them the night following our adventures, and that, thanks to their mutual and usual practices, she had guessed the real state of things.
The sisters did not deny it, adding that it was all her fault.
And after abusing them most vehemently, she had sworn never again to darken their doors; but they did not care a jot.
A few days afterwards our good fortune delivered us from Angela; she was taken to Vicenza by her father where he had work painting frescoes.
I did not mourn her departure.
Thanks to her absence, I found myself undisturbed possessor of the two charming sisters.
The key fit perfectly, and every week I used it twice, slipping through their door as the city slept, welcomed by laughter and candlelight.
Carnival was nearly over when M. Manzoni came to me with a message.
"Juliette wishes to see you," he said. "She regrets that you ceased to visit her."
I felt curious, and accompanied him to her house.
Juliette received me very politely and remarked. "I hear you have a fine hall at your house. I would like to give a ball there, if you would give me the use of it."
I readily consented.
She handed me twenty-four sequins for the supper and for the band and promised to send people to hang chandeliers.
M. de Sanvitali had gone by then ruined, his lands seized by the Parmesan government in consequence of his extravagant expenditure.
Years later I met him at Versailles, splendid in the livery of Louis XV's court, bearing the star of the Order and attending the Duchess of Parma.
The ball glittered from the first note. Juliette's circle filled the hall painted smiles, powdered wigs, diamonds that caught every candle flame.
In the adjoining room, Madame Orio, her nieces, and the procurator Rosa sat quietly apart, my guests in name whom I had been permitted to introduce as persons of no consequence whatever.
While the after-supper minuets were being danced Juliette took me apart, and said, "Take me to your bedroom; I have just got an amusing idea."
My room was three flights up. The moment we entered she bolted the door, much to my surprise.
"I wish you," she said, "to dress me up in your ecclesiastical clothes, and I will disguise you as a woman with my own things. We will go down and dance together. Come, let us first dress our hair."
Feeling sure of something pleasant to come, and delighted with such an unusual adventure, I lose no time in arranging her hair.
She did the same for me, dusting my cheeks with rouge and two deliberate patches. I humoured her in everything.
"Perfect," she murmured, giving me with the best of grace a very loving kiss. "But do not ask for anything else."
"As you please, beautiful Juliette, but I give you due notice that I adore you!"
I place upon my bed a shirt, an abbe's neckband, a pair of drawers, black silk stockings. In fact, a complete fit-out.
Coming near the bed, Juliette drops her skirt, and cleverly gets into the drawers, which were not a bad fit.
However, when she comes to the breeches there is some difficulty; the waistband was too narrow.
"They'll need cutting," she said.
"Allow me." I sat on the bed to fix them.
She placed herself in front of me, with her back towards me.
My fingers worked the cloth; hers twitched at every touch. "Too curious, your fingers wander in unnecessary places." she scolded, slipping free and finishing the job herself.
Then I helped her to put her shoes on.
I tied her neckband, drew her shirt smooth across her shoulders. "Your hands are being too curious again, you rascal!"
But I took no notice of her.
I was not going to be duped, and I thought that a woman who had been paid one hundred thousand ducats was well worth some study.
And in truth, her bosom was rather scanty.
When she was dressed, it was my turn.
In spite of her objections, I quickly get rid of my breeches, and she must put on me the chemise, then a skirt, in a word she has to dress me up.
But all at once, playing the coquette, her eyes flicked downward.
"You might hide yourself better," she said coldly.
She refused to grant me the favour which would soon afford both relief and calm.
I tried to kiss her, and she repulsed me.
Frustration burned through me, and in spite of herself she had to witness the last stage of my excitement.
At the sight of this, she poured out every insulting word she can think of; I endeavored to prove that she was to blame, but it was all in vain.
However, she was compelled to complete my disguise.
She finished it in silence, her fingers quick, her expression unreadable.
There is no doubt that an honest woman would not have exposed herself to such an adventure, unless she had intended to prove her tender feelings.
More so, she would not have drawn back at the very moment she saw them shared by her companion
But women like Juliette are often guided by a spirit of contradiction which causes them to act against their own interests.
Besides, she felt disappointed when she found out that I was not timid, and my want of restraint appeared to her a want of respect.
I am sure that she would not have objected to my stealing a few light favours which she would have allowed me to take, as being of no importance, but, by doing that, I should have flattered her vanity too highly.
Our disguise being complete, we went together to the dancing-hall.
The ball paused when we entered. Applause broke out; laughter followed.
I curtseyed, Juliette bowed, and the room spun with delight.
Whispers rippled through the crowd: everybody gave me credit for a piece of fortune which I had not enjoyed, but I was not ill-pleased with the rumour.
I danced with the false abbe, who was only too charming.
Juliette treated me so well during the night that I construed her manners towards me into some sort of repentance, and I almost regretted what had taken place between us.
It was a momentary weakness for which I was sorely punished.
By the end of the quadrille, every man wanted a turn with the "abbé," and I became myself rather free with the young girls, who would have been afraid of exposing themselves to ridicule had they offered any opposition to my caresses.
M. Querini, sulking in a corner, foolishly asked whether I still wore my breeches.
"I lent them to Juliette," I said.
He paled and refused to dance again.
Soon everyone knew.
The whispers turned to certainty: the sacrifice has been consummated.
Only Nanette and Marton could not imagine the possibility of my being unfaithful to them.
Juliette saw the damage too late; she perceived that she had been guilty of great imprudence, her face betrayed it when we slipped back upstairs.
In my room, the music still humming through the floor, thinking that she had repented of her previous behavior, I caught her hand.
"Beautiful Juliette, I am disposed to give you every satisfaction"
Her answer was a slap- hard, clean, across the face.
For an instant I almost struck back.
Instead, I turned away, stripped off her gown, and dressed in silence.
She did the same.
When we reappeared below, the mark of a large hand burned bright despite the cold water I had used to hide it.
Before she left, she drew me aside.
Her voice was low, steady. "If you have any fancy for being thrown out of the window, you could enjoy that pleasure whenever you liked to enter my house, and if this night's adventure ever becomes publicly known, I would have you murdered."
I took care not to give her any cause for the execution of either of her threats.
The city didn't. Our exchanged shirts told their own story.
As I was not seen at her house, people supposed that she had been compelled by M. Querini to keep me at a distance.
The reader will see how, six years later, this extraordinary woman thought proper to feign entire forgetfulness of this adventure.
Lent passed in a measured routine: mornings at the Convent of the Salutation, where I studied experimental physics; evenings at M. de Malipiero's assemblies.
When Easter came, I kept my promise to the Countess of Mont-Real -and followed my own longing for Lucie- by returning to Pasean.
The company had changed.
Count Daniel was newly married to a Gozzi, and the house buzzed with a younger set: a young and wealthy government official, his pretty wife, her lively sister.
Their laughter filled the dining room, and supper dragged on forever.
I smiled where politeness required, but my thoughts were elsewhere -in the garden gatehouse, where I imagined a certain girl with black hair waiting by dawn.
The same chamber was given to me.
Familiar walls, the same scent of lavender on the linens.
I went to bed restless, certain she would come early.
At first light, I heard the latch turn.
My heart leapt, then fell.
It wasn't Lucie.
A fat, ugly servant-girl stood before me.
"Where is the gatekeeper's family?" I asked.
She rattled off something in the local dialect -broad, musical and completely unintelligible to me.