Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/275

 it was excessively repugnant to his vanity to have it believed that he had received his share of the blows so liberally distributed by Michael; besides, his finest opera was to be represented at Nicolo's theatre,—and nothing more was necessary to have recalled him from the other world.

Whilst he was preparing for this ovation, Salvator and Antonio were taking measures to lead to the successful abduction of Marianna.

"You will succeed, I am sure of it, and I will answer for it with my head," said Salvator to his friend; "receive, then, my best wishes for your happiness, in spite of the vain instinct of fear which seizes me at the thought of this marriage."

"What do you say," exclaimed Antonio, "what do you say, dear master?"

"I ought not to trouble you by my ideas concerning this marriage; and yet are you not free to treat these ideas as chimerical or foolish dreamings? I love woman, dear Antonio; but indeed, I tell you, that the most seductive, she for whom I should feel the most exalted passion, could not chase from my fearing mind those doubts, those apprehensions in which the conjugal ties are enveloped to my eyes. There is, do you see, in the nature of all women, I know not what mysterious machinery, which the science of the most skilful men cannot penetrate the secret of. She, by whose charms we have allowed ourselves to be caught, she who appears to have given herself to us with the truest, the most devoted passion, is often the first to betray her sworn faith and rend, without scruple, the compact of a union which ought to be eternal. It is my sad experience which makes me dread for you, my friend, some future sorrow which there would, perhaps, be time to avoid."

"But I dare not," replied Antonio, "I will no longer listen to you. Who then would dare to suspect my beautiful, my pure Marianna?"

"No one, assuredly," continued Salvator; "your Marianna is an angel of beauty and virtue; but it is precisely the ineffa-