They seemed incredibly far off and yet incredibly large.

He stood where he was for a while, looking around.

What to other eyes would have been impenetrable darkness, was to him no more than deep twilight.

The gravel path being painful to his bare feet, he walked upon the greensward, where, moreover, his footfall made no sound.

So light was his tread that he felt as if soaring.
"Has my mood changed," he thought, "since those days when, as a man of thirty, I sought such adventures?
Do I not now, as then, feel all the ardors of desire and all the sap of youth course through my veins?
Am I not, as of old, Casanova?
Being Casanova, why should I be subject, as others are subject, to the pitiful law which is called age!" Growing bolder, he asked himself: "Why am I creeping in disguise to Marcolina?
Is not Casanova a better man than Lorenzi, even though he be thirty years older?
Is not she the one woman who would have understood the incomprehensible?
Was it needful to commit this lesser rascality, and to mislead another man into the commission of a greater rascality?
Should I not, with a little patience, have reached the same goal?
Lorenzi would in any case have gone to-morrow, whilst I should have remained.