Now she is
inflated with pride of her ancestry, her gifts, and would subordinate
everybody and everything; she would never speak a commonplace word,
and then again feels that her life has been a failure and she is
destined to be always waiting. She falls on her knees sobbing, praying
to God with outstretched hands as if He were in her room; almost vows
to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem one-tenth of the way on foot; to
devote her money to good works; lacks the pleasures proper to her age;
wonders if she can ever love again. On throwing a bouquet from a
window into a crowd in the Corso a young man choked so beautifully a
workman who caught it that by that one act of strangling and snatching
the bouquet she fell in love. The young man calls and they see each
other often. Now she is clad from head to foot in an armor of cold
politeness, now vanity and now passion seem uppermost in their
meetings. She wonders if a certain amount of sin, like air, is
necessary to a man to sustain life. Finally they vow mutual love and
Pietro leaves, and she begins to fear that she has cherished illusions
or been insulted; is torments at things unsaid or of her spelling in
French. She coughs and for three days has a new idea that she is going
to die; prays and prostrates herself sixty times, one for each bead in
her rosary, touching the floor with her forehead every time; wonders
if God takes intentions into account; resolves to read the New
Testament, but can not find one and reads Dumas instead.
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