Then,
quite suddenly, so that Casanova seemed to awaken from a confusing
dream, they all found themselves in the parlor once more. On the other
side of the grating, dim figures were moving. It was impossible to
distinguish whether, behind the thick bars, three or five or twenty
veiled women were flitting to and fro like startled ghosts. Indeed, none
but Casanova, with eyes preternaturally acute to pierce the darkness,
could discern that they were human outlines at all.
The Abbess attended her guests to the door, mutely gave them a sign
of farewell, and vanished before they had found time to express their
thanks for her courtesy.
Suddenly, just as they were about to leave the parlor, a woman's voice
near the grating breathed the word "Casanova." Nothing but his name, in
a tone that seemed to him quite unfamiliar. From whom came this breach
of a sacred vow? Was it a woman he had once loved, or a woman he had
never seen before? Did the syllables convey the ecstasy of an unexpected
reencounter, or the pain of something irrecoverably lost; or did it
convey the lamentation that an ardent wish of earlier days had been so
late and so fruitlessly fulfilled? Casanova could not tell.
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