Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/267

 an honorable calling and powerful protection. One word more, dear Antonio, Formica, the mountebank, holds your happiness in his hands!"

Pasquale Capuzzi did not have to seek long for the authors of the scurvy trick, which had so seriously disturbed him near the People's Grate. Antonio and Sal vat or, whom he looked upon as the instigators, enjoyed in his mind unequalled hatred. Poor Marianna was ill, not, as he believed, from the effects of fear, but at Antonio's want of success, which placed her in much greater captivity. She hardly dared to hope that her friend would again attempt her deliverance. In her anger she overburdened Capuzzi with caprices and annoyances. The poor old man suffered without complaining, and trembled with love when, after scenes of reproaching and repining, enough to have destroyed the peace of a hundred families, Marianna deigned to allow him to place his dry and wrinkled lips upon her delicious little hand, rendered still more delicate by fever. Capuzzi then fell into an ecstacy, he fell at the feet of the beautiful young girl, protesting that he would devour with kisses, the pope's slipper, until he had obtained from His Holiness the dispensation necessary to his union with so adorable a person. Marianna quietly favored him in this thought: she understood that by allowing him to hold to this dear belief, she should secure the only chance of safety which remained to her.

Several days after the nocturnal adventure which we have related, Michael came and knocked at the door of the room in which Capuzzi was dining in company with Marianna, and said that a stranger insisted upon speaking with the master of the house.

"By all the saints," exclaimed the old man, "is it not well known that I do not open my doors to any one!"

"But, sir," added Michael, "this stranger appears to be a