Her little speech raised him to the seventh heaven of joy.
"I am the happiest man in all Rome," he said, assuming his most jaunty walk, and swinging his hat gaily between his thumb and finger.

But a current of deep thought was stirring in him as he went down the broad, staircase by his wife's side.

He was thinking what life might have been to him had he found Corona del Carmine--how could he?
she was not born then--had he found her, or her counterpart, thirty years ago.

He was wondering what conceivable sacrifice there could be which he would not make to regain his youth--even to have his life lived out and behind him, if he could only have looked back to thirty years of marriage with Corona.

How differently he would have lived, how very differently he would have thought! how his whole memory would be full of the sweet past, and would be common with her own past life, which, to her too, would be sweet to ponder on! He would have been such a good man--so true to her in all those years! But they were gone, and he had not found her until his foot was on the edge of the grave--until he could hardly count on one year more of a pitiful artificial life, painted, bewigged, stuffed to the semblance of a man by a clever tailor--and she in the bloom of her glory beside him! What he would have given to have old Saracinesca's strength and fresh vitality--old Saracinesca whom he hated! Yes, with all that hair--it was white, but a little dye would change it.