Agnes, or, Beauty and Pleasure — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i TO eae ore Pe ress ee “Bree sft eh te kee ES ee COM ATIIGLONONO) AGNES; OR, BEAUTY AND PLEASURE. 3) sincerest and most devoted love!” exclaimed the Marchioness, again lavishing the tonderest and most voluptuous caresses upon the Minister. “ But remember —this must be accomplished without noise or disturbance——’”’ ‘‘ With the utmost silence, and in the dead of night,” interjected Ramorino. “‘ There are gags for tongues as well as chains for limbs !” ‘Yes, yes,” said the Marchioness, agitated with a feverish. joy, mingling with a certain apprelien- sion lest everything should fail at the very moment when success seemed to be promised: “there must indeed be silence on the part of those wretches— —for if they were allowed to raise their voices in the presence of your guards and sbdirri, they might tell tales which, alas! I should blush to have re- peated y “Fear maught upon this head,” interrupted Ramorino. “ If my men find no easier means of silencing the tongues of those wretches, a more effectual method shall be tried :’ — the Count paused for a few moments ; then looking steadily at the Marchioness, he added, “Their brains shall be blown out,” “‘ My friend! my benefactor ! my lover! my be- loved!” cried the Marchioness, in accents of en- thusiasm. “Ob, I do indeed love you! But when ‘To-morrow night,” responded Ramorino. “I will give the requisite orders to the most trust- worthy and discreet of my followers; and you, dearest Lucrezia, must indicate the best mode by which the transaction is to be carried out - Let me not seem to be a party to it!” inter- rupted the Marchioness; “or else the domestics will wonder they will think that Ciprina had got deep into certain secrets which I did not choose to have known v “Can you not give to the affair such a com- plexion,” asked the Count of Ramorino, “ that it may seem as if Ciprina and her paramour had fled of their own accord? For rest assured, dearest Luerezia, that if you only indicate the means of ingress and egress with regard to your mansion— the means, I would say, which are the most secret and private—I will undertake that the sbirri shall do their duty so well, that not an unusual sound shall ruffle the slumber of even the very lightest sleeper beneath your roof.” “‘The means are easy,” responded the Mar- chioness. ‘ Louk, my dear Count,” she continued, indicating the figured carpet with the point of her exquisitely-shaped foot, and by the movement dis- playing the ankle up to the very swell of the leg, —‘“suppose that this portion of the pattern re- presents the inner stable-yard of my town-man- sion * “The stable-yard where your own beautiful steed is kept?” said the Count. “To be sure! I have seen it there have I not ?” “Yes—you have seen it there,” continued the Marchioness. ‘‘ But perhaps you may not have noticed indeed it can scarcely be probable— that on one side of this stable-yard there is a little low door, deeply set in the solid ma- sonry ? ““[ have noticed that door,” interrupted the Count of Ramorino, with a peculiar smile; “and E can cow cunjecture the nature of the statement you are about to make, and which corraborates a p? e certain written tradition preserved amongst the archives of my department of the Government.” “‘ Indeed ?”” ejaculated the Marchioness, with a look of the most unfeigned surprise. “ A written tradition P” “Yes,” rejoined Ramorino,—“‘a tradition of the existence of some secret passage in the Mi- rano mansion: but there is a note appended to the entry in the police-books, to the effect that it remains a matter of doubt whether the Marquis of Mirano, your deceased husband, preserved that secret passage when renovating his palatial dwell- ing—or whether he condemned it altogether. I may here parenthetically observe, my dear Lu- crezia, that if I had been Minister of Police at the time when ‘those repairs and improvements were in progress, I should have made it my busi- ness to ascertain the point I have just represented as having hitherto remained doubtful,—because it is my idea that a Minister of Police ought to be acquainted with everything.” * And how would you have ascertained such a point, my dear Count?’ inquired the Mar- chioness, with a smile, which however veiled a certain degree of uneasiness, even in respect to her new lover: for shrewd and penetrating though she had hitherto known him to be, she could not help now fancying—and almost fearing—that ho was more cunning in that shrewdness and more keen in that penetration then she had even antici- pated; so that perhaps her own dark secrets and sinister purposes might not remain for ever con- cealed from his knowledge. ** How could I have ascertained the point P” re- peated Ramorino, almost with a transitory smile of pity for her ignorance, until the sensation was in a@ moment absorbed in the long and impassioned caress which he bestowed upon her ere he went on speaking; for that woman exhaled as it were the very perfume of voluptuousness, so that the brain, usually so clear, of the Minister of Police was more than half intoxicated in his delicious contact with her form. ‘ Were there not brick- layers, and masons, and carpenters who could have been questioned ?” “There were only two bricklayers and two car- penters,” interjected the Marchioness, ‘* who were specially engaged in the renovation of those parts of the building wherewith the secret is connected; and they worked at nightetime, unknown to their comrades.” “Tf there had been only one,” rejoined the Minister, “I would have extracted the secret from him !” “But suppose that he was well paid for his secrecy P” ‘There are grades and degrees in all things: one bribe is heavier than another; and the heaviest bribe carries the day.” ‘But what if the workman,” continued the Marchioness, “ had been sent off to some distant part of the country—or into another State—the moment his labour was accomplished P” ‘* He would have been intercepted on his de- parture from Florence,” rejoined Ramorino, with a smile, which was this time of a complacent self- sufficiency: “and his secret would have been ob- tained from him. JBelieve me, my dear Lucrezia, whatever I desire to know I will assuredly pene~ trate and fathom; and if there be now and then <SiiCO