and now she was overcome by perplexity. Muzzio went off to his pavilion: the husband and wife went to their bedroom.
IV
Valeria did not quickly fall asleep; there was a faint and languid fever in her blood and a slight ringing in her ears . . . from that strange wine, as she supposed, and perhaps too from Muzzio's stories, from his playing on the violin . . . towards morning she did at last fall asleep, and she had an extraordinary dream.
She dreamt that she was going into a large room with a low ceiling . . . Such a room she had never seen in her life. All the walls were covered with tiny blue tiles with gold lines on them; slender carved pillars of alabaster supported the marble ceiling; the ceiling itself and the pillars seemed half transparent . . . a pale rosy light penetrated from all sides into the room, throwing a mysterious and uniform light on all the objects in it; brocaded cushions lay on a narrow rug in the very middle of the floor, which was smooth as a mirror. In the corners almost unseen were smoking lofty
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