Page:Tales of Today.djvu/135

Rh politics failed to interest him and secure his attention, I advised him to undress and go to bed and bade him adieu. The weather was cold and I had no cloak. Don Ottavio urged me to take his, so I accepted it and received a lesson in the difficult art of draping one's self in the true Roman fashion.

I left the Aldobrandi palace, muffled up to the ears. I had barely taken a few steps along the sidewalk of the Place Saint Marc when a man of the people, whom I had observed sitting upon a bench by the palace door, came up to me and handed me a paper with writing on it.

"For the love of God," he said, "read this."

Whereupon he disappeared, running as fast as his legs could carry him.

I had taken the paper, and looked about for a light to read it by. By the light of a lamp burning before a Madonna I saw that it was a note written in pencil and apparently by a trembling hand. With considerable difficulty I managed to decipher the following words:

"Do not come this evening, or we are undone! Everything is known excepting your name. Nothing shall ever separate us.

"Thy ."

"Lucrèce!" I exclaimed. "Still Lucrèce! What diabolical mystification is there at the bottom of all this? 'Don't come!' But I would like to know what road one has to take to reach you, my pretty one."

While ruminating upon this note I had mechanically turned my steps in the direction of the viccolo di