Brontu, however, paying no attention, tiptoed to the door. Giovanna was standing before an open drawer, re-reading a letter which she had found slipped underneath the door when they got home that day. It was a heartbroken appeal from Costantino. In his round, unformed characters he implored her for the last time not to do this thing that she was about to do. He reminded her of the far-away time of their early love; he promised to come back; he assured her solemnly of his innocence. "If you have no pity for me," the letter concluded, "at least have some for yourself, for your own soul. Remember the mortal sin: remember eternity!" Ah, the same words that Aunt Porredda had used; the very same, the very same! Uncle Isidoro must have slipped the letter in while they were away. How long it had been since they had had any direct news of the prisoner! The tears rushed to her eyes, but what moved her were probably more the memories of the past than any thoughts of that eternal future. Suddenly she heard the door being pushed softly open, and some one stealing in behind her. Leaning quickly over, she began to rummage in the drawer, with trembling hands and misty eyes. Brontu stood directly behind her with outstretched arms, he clasped her around the shoulders, and she, pretending to be frightened, began to tremble. "What is it? What are you doing?" he asked in a low, broken voice. "Oh! I am looking--looking--the apron we got for your mother--I don't know what I have done with it. Let me go, let me go," she said, trying to free herself from his embrace. Close to her face she saw his white teeth gleaming between the full, smiling lips, as red and lustrous as two ripe cherries; then, suddenly, she felt his hand behind her head, and those two burning lips were pressed close to her own in a kiss that was like the blast from a fiery furnace. "Ah!" she panted. "We have forgotten eternity!" A little later she was seated once more in her place by the fire, laughing with all the abandonment of a happy child; while Brontu regarded her with the same look in his eyes that he had when he had been drinking. The winter passed by. Costantino's friends never abandoned their efforts to break off the accursed match, but in vain. The Dejases and Eras were like people bewitched, and remained deaf alike to prayers, threats, and innuendoes. The syndic, even the syndic, a pale and haughty personage who resembled Napoleon I., was against this "devil's marriage," and when Brontu and Giovanna came to him in great secrecy to have it published, he treated them with the utmost contempt, spitting on the ground all the time they were there.