The curtain fell back into
its place, and all was as it had been. Except for one thing; for now, as
if there were no longer any reason for delay, day dawned over house and
garden.
Casanova was still lying behind the bench, his arms outstretched before
him. After a while he crept on all fours to the middle of the alley, and
thence onward till he reached a place where he could not be seen from
Marcolina's window or from any of the others. Rising to his feet with an
aching back, he stretched body and limbs, and felt himself restored to
his senses, as though re-transformed from a whipped hound into a human
being--doomed to feel the chastisement, not as bodily pain, but as
profound humiliation.
"Why," he asked himself, "did I not go to the window while it was still
open? Why did I not leap over the sill? Could she have offered any
resistance; would she have dared to do so; hypocrite, liar, strumpet?"
He continued to rail at her as though he had a right to do so, as though
he had been her lover to whom she had plighted troth and whom she had
betrayed. He swore to question her face to face; to denounce her before
Olivo, Amalia, the Marchese, the Abbate, the servants, as nothing better
than a lustful little whore.
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