He paused in his furious attack, and "Ha!" says he, "here's the husband." He began to laugh; he laughed with such gusto and abandoned himself to such uproarious mirth that very soon all the company except myself was laughing with him. All of a sudden he stopped, with a mighty serious face. "Harkee, my friend," says he to me, "upon reflection I do believe that I have been hasty. The spasm passes. It may well be that it was the excellence of this honest man's catering which betrayed me, and not any infernal design. A passing cholic, after all!" He smiled benevolently upon his recent prisoner. "Rise, my worthy friend," said he, "and receive a pardon from the right hand of fellowship, sugared, as I hope, to your liking." His hand was full of gold pieces. "Nobody shall say," he added proudly, "that Aquamorta cannot requite good service, because he knows so well how to reprimand bad service." The cook humbly thanking his Excellency, the storm was over. But I had another brewing, or thought that I should have. As the cavaliere was about to retire, I stopped him and said that I wished to accompany him. He scratched his head. "Why, my dear sir," says he, "that will be plaguily inconvenient at this moment. My rooms are full of guests, d'ye see? Your charming lady is entertaining all the Senators' mistresses, and I am in the midst of a carouse with their Serenities. I am not one for hard-and-fast categories, as you know. Your dirty shirt and ragged elbows are nothing to me--but zounds! I can't answer for the most Serene Ancients." I said then that I would retire to my room and wait for my wife--but to that he objected that, in strict truth, and to keep up the fiction upon which my safety depended, I had no room, at all. My wife was considered to be his wife, while I was supposed to be what I had professed myself, his servant. Would I, he asked me, for the sake of a night's gratification, imperil the many happy years which, he hoped and would take care, should be in store for me? I was somewhat slow in meeting this preposterous question as it deserved, and when I opened my lips to speak he stopped me with, "Say no more. I don't ask your thanks. Your safety is as dear to me as my own." He beckoned to one of the scullions, and "Hi, you," says he, "show this fellow of mine where he can sleep, and see to it that his company be honest." With that he ruffled upstairs with the airs of a grand duke, and left me once more stranded with the cooks. To come to an end of this humiliating page, rejecting all offers of company, I was accommodated with a wretched cupboard below the stairs, which smelt vilely of sour wine and mildewed cheese, and ruefully prepared to spend what sort of night I could, with my thoughts for bedfellows. I know not what hour of the night it was when I was roused out of a dream-tortured sleep by the creaking of my cupboard door. Looking up, the light of a candle which she held showed me Virginia.