Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 5.djvu/122

100 a man must be possessed by the devil to be satisfied with it."

"Then it is a ghost, there can be no doubt about it. But wait a bit, I have still another idea. You have mistaken the house — ah! that is it; near a garden? With a little low door to it. . . . Why, that is my dear friend Rosina's! Eighteen months ago she was the ornament of that street. It is true she has become blind in one eye, but that is a trifle. . . . She still has a very lovely profile."

None of these explanations satisfied me. When evening came I walked slowly past the house of Lucrezia, but I did not see anything. I went up and down past it with no further result. Three or four evenings followed, and I danced attendance under her windows as I went home from the Aldobrandi palace, with ever the same want of success. I had begun to forget the mysterious occupant of No. 13, when, passing towards midnight through the lane, I distinctly heard a woman's light laugh behind the shutter of the window at which the giver of the flowers had appeared to me. Twice I heard that little laugh, and I could not prevent feeling slightly afraid, when just at that moment I saw come out at the other end of the street a group of penitents, closely hooded, with