impertinent, as amorous as he; and they diverted themselves with our
company in a manner which did credit to his example. Such things, I hope
I may say, were very little to my taste; but it was necessary for me not
to seem singular, and I fancy that I did not.

After a similar night's entertainment at Poggibonsi we set out,
intending to be at Siena that same night. I need hardly say that the so
near prospect filled me with various and contending emotions. I might
hope, in the first place, to find Belviso there, returned with Virginia,
my faithful and tender wife. To know her safe, to have her by my side,
to be conscious, as I could not fail to be, of her deep and ardent love
for me testified in every glance of her eyes--such could not fail to be
a satisfaction to any honest, any sensible man. Such, too, I hope they
were. But I must needs confess that not this confident expectation (for
confident I was of Belviso's success) alone moved me and elated me at
the moment. No, it is the truth that, the nearer I came to Siena, the
more I realised the abiding influence of Aurelia upon my heart and
conscience. I could not but tremble at the thought that in so few hours
I should be treading the actual earth which her feet had lightly pressed
during the years when she must have been at her happiest, and if not
also at her loveliest--since when was she not at that?--assuredly at her
purest and most radiant hour; before she had been sullied by the
doctor's possessory rights, before she had been hurt by my dastardly
advances. This, then, this it was which really affected me, to feel like
some pilgrim of old, to Loreto, may be, or Compostella, to Walsingham,
to Rome--nay, to the very bourne and goal of every Christian's desire,
Jerusalem, the Holy City, itself--to feel, I say, singularly uplifted,
singularly set apart and dedicated to the privilege which was now at
last to be mine. From the moment of departure from Poggibonsi to that
moment when I saw, upon a background of pure green sky, the spear-like