"You failed to understand me, Don Aleo, if you thought that shame made me weep. There was no place in my heart for shame; there were enough other causes of sorrow to fill it and make it insensible to everything that came from without. If he had continued to love me, I should have been happy, though I had been covered with infamy in the eyes of what you call society." It was impossible for me to restrain a shudder of wrath; I rose to pace the floor. Juliette detained me. "Forgive me," she said in a trembling voice, "forgive me for the pain I cause you. It is beyond my strength always to avoid speaking of him." "Very well, Juliette," I said, stifling a painful sigh, "pray speak of him if it is a relief to you! But is it possible that you cannot succeed in forgetting him, when everything about you tends to direct your thoughts toward another life, another happiness, another love?" "Everything about me!" said Juliette excitedly; "are we not in Venice?" She rose and walked to the window; her white silk petticoat fell in numberless folds about her graceful form. Her chestnut hair escaped from the long pins of chased gold which only half confined it, and bathed her back in a flood of perfumed silk. She was so lovely with the faint touch of color in her cheeks, and her half loving, half bitter smile, that I forgot what she said and went to her to take her in my arms. But she had drawn the curtains partly aside, and looking through the glass, as the moon's moist beams were beginning to break through the clouds, she cried: "O Venice! how changed thou art! how beautiful thou once wert in my eyes, and how desolate and deserted thou dost seem to-day!" "What do you say, Juliette?" I cried in my turn; "have you been in Venice before? Why have you never told me?" "I saw that you wanted to see this beautiful city, and I knew that a word would have prevented you from coming here. Why should I have made you change your plan?" "Yes, I would have changed it," I replied, stamping my foot. "Even if we had been at the very gate of this infernal city, I would have caused the boat to steer for some shore unstained by that memory; I would have taken you there, I would have swum with you in my arms, if I had had to choose between such a journey and this house, where perhaps you will find at every step a burning trace of his passage! But tell me, Juliette, where in heaven's name I can take refuge with you from the past? Mention some city, tell me of some corner of Italy to which that adventurer has not dragged you in his train?" I was pale and trembling with wrath; Juliette turned slowly, gazed coldly at me, and said, turning her eyes once more to the window: "Venice, we loved thee in the old days, and to-day I cannot look on thee without emotion, for he was fond of thee, he constantly invoked thy name in his travels, he called thee his dear fatherland; for thou wert the cradle of his noble family, and one of thy palaces still bears the name that he bears."