Chapter 8

[3]The red devil, or will'o-the-wisp of the lagoons.

[4]The peninsula of Chioggia was originally inhabited by five or six families which never married except among themselves.

[5]Chioggia!

I do not propose, my friends, to describe all the vicissitudes which marked my passage from the beach at Chioggia to the stage of the leading theatres in Italy, and from the trade of fisherman to the rôle ofprimo tenore; that was the work of several years, and my reputation increased rapidly as soon as I had taken the first step in my career. If circumstances were often unfavorable, my easy-going disposition was always able to make the best of them, and I can fairly say that my great successes did not cost me very dear.

Ten years after leaving Venice, I was at Naples, playing Romeo at the San Carlo theatre. King Murat and his brilliant staff, and all the vain and venal beauties of Italy, were there. I did not pride myself on being a particularly ardent patriot, but I did not share the infatuation of that period for foreign domination. I did not turn my face backward toward a still more degrading past; I fed upon the first elements of Carbonarism, which were then fermenting, without definite shape or name, from Prussia to Sicily.

My heroism was simple and intense, as all religions are at their birth. I carried into all that I did, and especially into my art, the feeling of mocking pride and democratic independence which inspired me every day in the clubs and in clandestine pamphlets.Friends of Truth,Friends of Light,Friends of Liberty—such were the names under which liberal sympathies gathered; and even in the ranks of the French army, at the very side of the victorious leaders, we had associates, children of your great revolution, who, in their secret hearts, were determined to wash away the stain of the 18th Brumaire.

I loved the rôle of Romeo, because I could give expression in it to warlike sentiments and feelings of chivalrous detestation. When my audience, always half French, applauded my dramatic outbursts, I felt as if I were revenged for our national degradation; for those conquerors were unconsciously applauding curses aimed at them, longings for their death and threats to attain it.

One evening, during one of my finest moments, when it seemed as if the roof would fall under the explosions of frantic applause, my eyes fell upon a face in a proscenium box almost on the stage, an impassive face, the sight of which made my blood suddenly run cold. You have no idea of the mysterious influences which govern the actor's inspiration, how the expression of certain faces absorbs him, and stimulates or deadens his audacity. Speaking for myself at least, I cannot avoid an instant sympathy with my audience, whether the effect is to spur me on if I find it inclined to resist, until I subjugate it by my passion, or to melt us into one as by the action of an electric current, so that its quick response imparts new vigor to my sensitive talent. But certain glances, or certain words spoken in whispers close beside me, have sometimes disturbed me so that it required the utmost effort of which my will was capable to combat their effect.

The face that impressed me at that moment was ideally beautiful; its owner was beyond dispute the most beautiful woman in the whole theatre. Meanwhile, the whole audience was roaring and stamping in admiration, and she alone, the queen of the evening, seemed to be studying me dispassionately, and to discover faults which the vulgar eye could not detect. She was the Muse of Tragedy, stern Melpomene in person, with her regular oval face, her black eyebrows, her high forehead, her raven hair, her great eyes gleaming with a dark flame in their vast orbits, and her stern lip, whose unbending curve was never softened by a smile; and, with all the rest, in the very bloom and flower of youth, with a graceful, lithe figure instinct with health.

"Who is that lovely dark girl with such a cold eye?" I asked Count Nasi, during the entr'acte; he had taken a great liking to me, and came on the stage every evening to chat with me.

"She is either the daughter or niece of Princess Grimani," was his reply. "I do not know her, for she has just come from some convent or other, and her mother, or aunt, is herself a stranger in this region. All I can tell you is that Prince Grimani loves her like his own child, that he will give her a handsome dowry, and that she is one of the richest matches in Italy; and yet I shall never take my place in the lists."

"Why not, pray?"

"Because they say she is insolent and vain, infatuated with her noble birth, and of an overbearing disposition. I care so little for women of that stamp that I don't even care to look at her when I meet her. They say that she will be queen of the balls next winter, and that her beauty is something marvellous. I don't know or want to know whether it is or is not. I can't endure Grimani either; he is a genuine stagehidalgo; and if it were not that he has a handsome fortune and a young wife who is said to be attractive, I don't know how anyone could be induced to endure the tedium of his conversation or the freezing stiffness of his hospitality."

During the following scene I glanced at the proscenium box from time to time. I was no longer disturbed by the thought that its occupants were disposed to judge me unfavorably, since I had learned that the Grimanis were accustomed to maintain a haughty demeanor even with people whom they considered to belong to their own class. I looked at the girl with the impartiality of a sculptor or a painter; she seemed to me even lovelier than at first sight. Old Grimani, who was sitting beside her at the front of the box, had a fine face, but stern and cold. That supercilious couple seemed to exchange a few monosyllables at long intervals, and at the end of the opera he rose slowly and went out, without waiting for the ballet.

The next day the old man and the young woman were in the same place, in the same unmoved attitude. I did not once see any trace of emotion, and Prince Grimani slept sweetly throughout the first acts. The young woman, on the contrary, seemed to be paying her whole attention to the performance. Her great eyes were fastened on me like those of a ghost, and that fixed, searching and profound gaze became so embarrassing to me that I carefully avoided it. But, as if an evil spell had been cast upon me, the more I tried to keep my eyes away, the more they persisted in meeting those of the young sorceress. There was something so extraordinarily powerful in that mysterious magnetism, that I was assailed by childish dread of it, and feared that I should not be able to finish the opera. I had never felt anything like it. There were times when I fancied that I recognized that marble face, and I seemed to be on the point of accosting her as an old friend. At other times I believed that she was my deadly enemy, my evil genius, and I was tempted to hurl violent reproaches at her.

Theseconda donnaadded to my truly alarming discomfort by whispering to me:

"Look out, Lelio, you'll catch the fever. That woman in the box will give you thejettatura."[6]

I had been a firm believer in thejettaturaduring the greater part of my life. I no longer believed in it; but the love of the marvellous, which is not easily dislodged from an Italian head, especially that of a child of the people, had led me to indulge in most extravagant reflections on the subject of animal magnetism. It was the period when charming fancies of that sort were blooming luxuriantly all over the world; Hoffmann was writing hisTales, and magnetism was the mysterious pivot upon which all the hopes of theilluminatiturned. Whether because that foible had taken such complete possession of me that it controlled my actions, or because it took me by surprise at a moment when I was not in the best of health, I began to shiver from head to foot, and I nearly fainted when I returned to the stage. That wretched weakness finally gave place to wrath, and as I walked toward the box in question with La Checchina—theseconda donnawho had mentioned the evil eye—I said to her, indicating my fair enemy, but in a tone too low to be overheard by the audience, these words paraphrased from one of our finest tragedies:

"Bella e stupida."

The signora flushed to the roots of her hair with anger. She started to rouse Prince Grimani, who was sleeping with all his heart; but she suddenly stopped, as if she had changed her mind, and kept her eyes fixed upon me as before, but with a vindictive, threatening expression which seemed to say:

"You shall repent of that."

Count Nasi accosted me as I left the theatre after the performance.

"Lelio," said he, "you are in love with the Grimani."

"Am I bewitched, in God's name," I cried, "and why is it that I cannot rid myself of that apparition?"

"You won't rid yourself of it for a long time either, poor boy," said Checchina, with a half-artless, half-mocking air; "that Grimani is the devil. Wait a moment," she added, taking my arm, "I know something about fever, and I will wager—Corpo della Madonna!"—she cried, turning pale, "you have a terrible attack of fever, my poor Lelio!"

"One always has the fever when one acts and sings in a way to give it to others," said the count; "come to supper with me, Lelio."

I declined; I was ill, in very truth. During the night I had a violent fever, and the next day I could not leave my bed. Checchina installed herself at my bedside and did not leave me all the time that I was ill.

Checchina was a young woman of twenty or thereabout, tall and large, and of a somewhat masculine type of beauty, although very white and fair. She was my sister and my kinswoman, that is to say, she came from Chioggia. Like me she was a fisherman's child and had long employed her strength beating the waters of the Adriatic with oars. A wild love of independence led her to use her fine voice as a means of assuring herself a free profession and a wandering life. She had run away from her father's house and begun to roam about the country on foot, singing in the public squares. I chanced to meet her at Milan, in a furnished lodging-house where she was singing for the guests at the table d'hôte. I recognized her as a Chioggian by her accent; I questioned her and remembered seeing her as a child; but I was careful to say nothing by which she could identify me as akinsman, especially as that Daniele Gemello who had left the neighborhood rather suddenly, as the result of an unlucky duel. That duel cost a poor devil his life and his murderer many sleepless nights.

Allow me to pass rapidly over that incident, and to avoid awakening a bitter memory during our quiet evening. It will be enough for me to say to Zorzi that the practice of duelling with knives was still in full vigor at Chioggia in my youth, and the whole population acted as seconds. Duels were fought in broad daylight, on the public square, and insults were avenged by the wager of combat, as in the days of chivalry. My melancholy success exiled me from the province! for thepodestatwas far from lenient in such matters, and the law inflicted severe penalties upon the last remnants of those savage old customs. Perhaps this will explain why I always concealed the story of my early years, and why I travelled over the world under the name of Lelio, sending money secretly to my family, writing to them with the greatest caution, and disclosing to no one, not even to them, my means of subsistence, for fear that, by corresponding with me they might draw upon themselves the open hostility of those families in Chioggia whom the death of my assailant had angered more or less.

But, as my origin was betrayed by an ineradicable trace of the Venetian accent, I passed myself off as a native of Palestrina, and Checchina had adopted the habit of calling me hercountryman, hercousinor hergossip, as it happened.

Thanks to my care and my assistance, Checchina rapidly acquired considerable talent, and at the time of my life of which I am now speaking, she had been engaged on honorable terms as a member of the troupe at San Carlo.

She was a strange but most excellent creature, was Checchina; she had improved wonderfully since I had picked her out of the gutter, so to speak; but she still retained, and retains to this day, a certain rusticity which does not altogether disappear on the stage, and which makes her the first actress in the world in such rôles as Zerlina. She had corrected in large measure the amplitude of her gestures and the abruptness of her speech, but she retained enough of both to come very near being comic in pathetic parts. However, as she had intelligence and feeling, she raised herself to a relatively high position, but the public did not give her all the credit she deserved. Opinions were divided concerning her, and a certain abbé said that she brushed so close to the sublime and the farcical that there was not enough room left between the two for her long arms.

Unluckily, Checchina had one failing, from which, by the way, the greatest artists are not exempt. She satisfied herself only in rôles which were entirely unsuited to her, and, scorning those in which she could best display herverve, her unconstant and her restless activity, she insisted upon producing great effects in tragedy. Like a true village maiden, she was intoxicated by superb costumes, and fancied that she was really a queen when she wore a diadem and a royal cloak. Her tall, lithe figure, her graceful, quasi-martial bearing, made of her a magnificent statue when she was not in motion. But her exaggerated gestures constantly betrayed the young oarswoman, and when I desired, on the stage, to warn her to be less vehement, I would whisper: "Per dio!non vogar!non siamo qui sull' Adriatico."[7]

Whether Checchina was my mistress is a question of little interest to you, I presume. I can only assure you that she was not at the time of which I am speaking, and that I was indebted for her affectionate care to nothing else than the kindness of her heart and her unfailing gratitude. She has always been a devoted sister and friend to me, and many a time she has risked a rupture with her most brilliant lovers, rather than desert me or neglect me when my health or my interests demanded her zealous care or her aid.

As I was saying, she took up her post at my bedside, and did not leave me until she had cured me. Her tireless devotion to me vexed Count Nasi somewhat, although he was my friend and placed full confidence in my word; but he himself confessed to me what he called his miserable weakness. When I urged Checchina to deal more gently with that excellent young man's involuntary sensitiveness, she would say:

"Nonsense! Don't you see that I must train him to respect my independence? Do you suppose that, when I am his wife, I will consent to abandon my stage friends and worry about what people in society think of me? Don't believe it, Lelio. I propose to remain free, and to obey the voice of my heart and nothing else."

She had persuaded herself, with none too good reason, that the count was fully determined to marry her; and I may say that she possessed, to a marvellous degree, the gift of deluding herself with respect to the violence of the passions she inspired; nothing could equal her confidence in a promise, unless it were her philosophical and heroic indifference when she was deceived.

I suffered considerably; my disease came very near assuming a serious character. The doctors found a very pronounced tendency to enlargement of the heart, and the very sharp pains which I felt about that organ and the excessive rush of blood thither necessitated numerous bleedings. So that I lost the rest of that season, and, as soon as I was convalescent, I went for rest and balmy air to a beautiful villa of Count Nasi's, a few leagues from Florence, near Cafaggiolo, at the foot of the Apennines. He promised to join me there with Checchina as soon as the performances for which she was engaged would allow her to leave Naples.

A few days of that delightful solitude benefited me so much that I was allowed to take excursions of some length, sometimes in the saddle, sometimes on foot, through the narrow gorges and picturesque ravines which form a first step to the towering masses of the Apennines. In my musing I called that region theprosceniumof the great range, and I loved to seek out some amphitheatre of hills or some natural terrace where, all alone and far from every eye, I could indulge in outbursts of lyric declamation, which were answered by the resonant echoes or the mysterious murmur of the streams flowing under the rocks.

One day I unexpectedly found myself on the Florence road. Like a glistening white ribbon it ran through a verdant, gently undulating country, strewn with beautiful gardens, wooded parks and handsome villas. Seeking to learn my whereabouts, I stopped at the gate of one of those charming abodes. The gate was open, and I could see an avenue of old trees mysteriously intertwined. Beneath those dark, voluptuously enlaced branches a woman was walking slowly—a woman of slender form and a bearing so noble that I paused to gaze at her and follow her with my eyes as long as possible. As she showed no inclination to turn, I was seized with an irresistible longing to see her features, and I yielded to it, heedless of the fact that I was violating the proprieties, and might be subjected to a humiliating rebuff.

"Who can say," I said to myself, "women are so indulgent sometimes in this mild climate of ours!"

Moreover, I reasoned that my face was too well known for me ever to be taken for a robber; and, lastly, I relied to some extent on the curiosity which the great majority of people feel to obtain a near view of the features and manners of an artist of some celebrity.

So I ventured into the shady avenue, walking rapidly, and was just about to overtake the solitary promenader, when I saw coming toward her a young man dressed in the latest fashion, and with a pretty, insipid face, who caught sight of me before I had time to jump in among the trees. I was within three yards of the noble pair. The young man stopped beside the lady, offered her his arm, and said to her, glancing at me with the most surprised air of which a perfectly attired man is capable:

"My dear cousin, who is this man who is following you?"

The lady turned, and the sight of her gave me such a shock that for a moment I was in danger of a relapse. My heart gave a sharp, nervous throb as I recognized the young woman who stared at me in such a curious way from her proscenium box at the time I was taken ill at Naples. Her face flushed slightly, then lost its color. But no gesture, no exclamation betrayed either surprise or anger. She eyed me from head to foot with calm disdain, and replied with incredible audacity:

"I don't know him."

That extraordinary statement aroused my curiosity. It seemed to me that I could detect in that girl such consummate dissimulation and such a strange sort of pride that I suddenly felt irresistibly impelled to take the risk of a mad adventure. We Bohemians do not allow ourselves to be awed overmuch by the customs of society and the laws of propriety; we have no great fear of being ejected from those private theatres where society takes its turn at posing before us, and where we feel so strongly the superiority of the artist; for there no one can arouse in us the intense emotions which we have the art of arousing. Salons bore us to death and chill our blood, in return for the warmth and life that we carry thither. So I approached my noble hosts with a dignified air, caring very little about the manner of their reception of me, and determined to take the first convenient pretext for obtaining admission to the house.

I bowed gravely and represented myself as a piano-tuner who had been sent for to Florence from a country-house, the name of which I pretended to remember imperfectly.

"This is not the place. You may quit this place," replied the signora, coldly. But, like a true fiancé, the cousin came to my assistance.

"My dear cousin," he said, "your piano is terribly out of tune; if this man could spare an hour, we might have some music this evening. I beg you to let him tune it, won't you?"

The young Grimani had a wicked smile on her lips as she replied:

"As you please, cousin."

"Does she propose to amuse herself at my expense or his?" I thought. "Perhaps both."

I bowed slightly to signify my consent. Thereupon the cousin, with careless courtesy, pointed out to me a glass door at the end of the avenue, where the branches, drooping lower and lower until they formed a sort of arbor, concealed the front of the villa.

"At the end of the large salon, signor," he said, "you will find a study. The piano is there. I shall have the honor to see you again when you have finished. Shall we walk as far as the pond?" he added, turning to his cousin.

I saw her smile again, almost imperceptibly, but with the keenest delight at the mortification that I felt, while she let me go in one direction and continued her stroll in the other, leaning on the arm of her elegant and aristocratic cousin.

It is not a very difficult matter to put a pianoalmostin tune, and although I had never tried before, I succeeded very well; but I spent much more time about it than an experienced hand would have required, and I watched with some impatience the sun sinking behind the treetops; for I had no other pretext for another interview with my singular heroine than to hear her try the piano when it was in tune. So I worked away awkwardly enough, and was in the midst of a monotonous drumming with which I was almost deafening myself, when I raised my head and saw the signora before me, half turned toward the fireplace, but watching me in the mirror with malicious intentness. To meet her sidelong glance and turn my eyes away was a matter of a second. I continued my work with the utmost coolness, resolved to watch the enemy and see what she was driving at.

La Grimani—I continued to give her that name in my mind, knowing no other—made a pretence of arranging some flowers in the vases on the mantel with great care; then she moved a chair, moved it back to the place where it was before, dropped her fan, picked it up with a great rustling of her skirts, opened a window, and instantly closed it again, then, seeing that I was determined not to notice anything, she adopted the extreme course of dropping a stool on her pretty little foot and uttering a cry of pain. I was stupid enough to drop the key on the metallic strings, which emitted a piteous wail. The signora started, shrugged her shoulders, and, suddenly recovering all her self-possession, as if we were acting a scene in a burlesque, she looked me in the face and said:

"Cosa, signore?"

"I thought that your ladyship spoke to me," I replied, with no less tranquillity, and resumed my work. She remained standing in the middle of the room as if petrified by amazement in the face of such audacity, or as if brought to a standstill by a sudden doubt as to my identity with the person whom she had thought that she recognized. At last she lost patience, and asked me, almost roughly, if I had nearly finished.

"Oh! bless my soul, no! signora," I replied; "here is a broken string, you see." As I spoke I gave the key a sharp twist on the pin I was turning, and broke the string.

"It seems to me," said she, "that this piano is giving you a great deal of trouble."

"A great deal," I rejoined, "the strings keep breaking." And I snapped a second one.

"That is very extraordinary," she exclaimed.

"Yes, it is indeed extraordinary," I replied.

The cousin entered at that moment, and I snapped a third string by way of salute. It was one of the lower bass strings, and it made a terrible report. The cousin, who was not expecting it, stepped back, and the signora laughed aloud. That laugh had a strange sound to me. It was not in harmony with her face or her manner; it was harsh and spasmodic, and disconcerted the cousin so that I almost pitied him.

"I am very much afraid," she said, when that nervous paroxysm came to an end and she was able to speak, "I am very much afraid that we cannot have any music to-night. This poor oldcembalois bewitched, all the strings are breaking. It is really supernatural, I assure you, Hector; if you so much as look at them they twist and snap with a horrible noise."

With that she began to laugh again, peal upon peal, without the slightest trace of merriment on her face. The cousin laughed because she did, but was abruptly checked by these words from her:

"For heaven's sake, cousin, don't laugh; you haven't the slightest inclination to."

The cousin seemed to me to be well used to being laughed at and teased. But he was hurt, no doubt, to be treated so in my presence; for he said in an irritated tone:

"Why shouldn't I be inclined to laugh as well as you, cousin?"

"Because I say that you are not," she replied. "But tell me, Hector," she added, abruptly changing the subject, "were you at San Carlo last year?"

"No, cousin."

"In that case you did not hear the famous Lelio?"

She said these last words with significant emphasis; but she had not the impudence to look me in the face immediately, and I had time to recover from the emotion caused me by that blow full in the face.

"I neither heard him nor saw him," said the guileless cousin, "but I heard a great dea! about him. He's a great artist, so I understand."

"Very great," replied La Grimani, "a full head taller than you. See! he is about this gentleman's height.—Do you know him, signor?" she added, turning to me.

"I know him very well, signora," I replied tartly; "he is a very handsome fellow, a very great actor, an admirable singer, a very clever talker, a bold and spirited adventurer, and, furthermore, a fearless duellist, which is not amiss."

The signora looked at her cousin, then glanced at me, with an indifferent air, as if to say: "It's of little consequence to me." Then she went off into another paroxysm of inextinguishable laughter, which was altogether unnatural, and in which neither her cousin nor myself joined. I returned to my pursuit of the dominant chord on the keyboard, and Signor Ettore moved about impatiently, making his new boots squeak on the floor, as if he were utterly disgusted with the conversation being carried on between a mere workman like myself and his noble fiancée.

"Look you, cousin, you mustn't believe what he says about Lelio," observed the signora, abruptly ceasing her convulsive laughter. "So far as the man's great beauty is concerned, I cannot contradict him for I didn't look at him; and, besides, an actor can always appear young and handsome with his paint and his false hair and moustaches. But as to his being an admirable singer and a good actor, that I deny. In the first place he sings false, in the second place he acts detestably. His declamation is too loud, his gestures commonplace, the expression of his features stiff and conventional. When he weeps, he makes wry faces; when he threatens, he roars; when he is majestic, he is tedious; and, in his best moments, when he holds himself back and doesn't speak, one might apply to him the refrain of the ballad:

"'Brutto è quanto stupido.'

I am sorry to disagree with this gentleman; but my opinion is the opinion of the public! It isn't my fault that Lelio didn't have the slightest success at San Carlo, and I don't advise you to take the journey to Naples to see him, cousin."

Having received this stinging lesson, for a moment I was on the verge of losing my head and picking a quarrel with the cousin to punish the signora; but the excellent youth did not give me time.

"That is just like a woman," he cried, "and above all things just like one of your inconceivable whims, cousin! Not more than three days ago, you told me that Lelio was the finest actor and the most incomparable singer in all Italy. I have no doubt that you will say to-morrow just the opposite of what you say to-day, with the privilege of taking it all back again the next day."

"To-morrow and the day after to-morrow and every day of my life, my dear cousin," the signora hurriedly interposed, "I will tell you that you are a fool and Lelio an idiot."

"Brava, signora," rejoined the cousin in an undertone, offering her his arm to leave the salon; "he who loves you is a fool, and he who displeases you an idiot."

"Before your lordship and ladyship retire," I said, without the slightest symptom of emotion, "I will call your attention to the fact that this piano is in such a bad condition that I cannot possibly repair it properly in one day. I am obliged to go now; but if such is your wish, I will return to-morrow."

"Certainly, signor," replied the cousin, with patronizing politeness, half turning toward me; "you will oblige me if you will return to-morrow."

La Grimani, stopping him with a sudden and energetic motion of her head, forced him to turn wholly around, and as she stood in the doorway, leaning on his arm and eyeing me with an air of defiance, she said, as she saw me close the piano and take my hat:

"Will the signor come again to-morrow?"

"Most certainly I shall not fail to do so," I replied, bowing to the ground.

She continued to detain her cousin in the doorway, so that I was obliged to pass in front of them in order to go out; and, as I did so, I bowed again and looked my Bradamante in the eye with an assurance befitting the combat upon which we had entered. A gleam of undaunted courage flashed from her eyes. Therein I read distinctly that my boldness did not displease her, and that the lists were not closed to me.

So I was at my post before noon the next day, and found my heroine at hers, seated at the piano and touching the silent or jangling keys with admirable indifference, as if she desired to prove to me by those diabolical discords her detestation and contempt for music.

I entered calmly and saluted her with as much respectful indifference as if I were in reality a piano-tuner. I placed my hat carelessly on a chair, I laboriously drew off my gloves, imitating the awkwardness of a man unused to wearing them. I took from my pocket a wooden box filled with spools of wire, and began to unwind enough for one string—all with the utmost gravity and without affectation. The signora continued to pound the hapless piano in unmerciful fashion, although the sounds she produced were of a nature to put to flight the most hardened savages. I at once saw that she was amusing herself by destroying its tone and breaking it more and more, in order to provide work for me, and I detected more coquetry than cruelty in that devilment; for she seemed disposed to remain with me.

Thereupon I said to her with a perfectly serious face: "Does your ladyship think that the piano begins to be in tune?"

"The harmony is satisfactory to me," she said, biting her lips to keep from laughing, "and the sounds it gives forth are extremely pleasant to the ear."

"It is a fine instrument," said I.

"And in very good condition," she rejoined.

"Your ladyship is a very talented performer."

"As you see."

"That is a charming waltz, and exceedingly well executed."

"Is it not? How could one help playing well on an instrument in such perfect tune? You love music, signor?"

"A little, signora; but your playing goes to my heart."

"In that case I will continue." And she proceeded, with a fiendish smile, to murder one of thebravuraairs she had heard me sing with the greatest applause on the stage.

"Is his lordship your cousin well?" I said, when she had finished.

"He is hunting."

"Is your ladyship fond of game?"

"I am immoderately fond of it. And you, signor?"

"I am sincerely and deeply partial to it."

"Which do you like best, game or music?"

"I like music at table, but at this moment I should like some game better."

She rose and rang. A servant appeared instantly, as if he were a piece of machinery set in motion by the bell-rope.

"Bring the game-pie that I saw in the pantry this morning," said the signora; and two minutes later the servant reappeared with an enormous pie, which he majestically placed on the piano at a sign from his mistress. A large salver, covered with dishes and all the accessories necessary for the refreshment of civilized beings, appeared as if by magic on the other side of the instrument, and the signora, with a strong but light touch, broke through the rampart of appetizing crust and made a large breach in the fortress.

300THE STRANGE LUNCHEON."This is a conquest in which our lords and masters the French shall have no share," she said, taking possession of a partridge which she placed on a Japanese plate; and she went with it to the other end of the room, where she squatted upon a velvet hassock with gold tassels, and proceeded to devour it.

THE STRANGE LUNCHEON."This is a conquest in which our lords and masters the French shall have no share," she said, taking possession of a partridge which she placed on a Japanese plate; and she went with it to the other end of the room, where she squatted upon a velvet hassock with gold tassels, and proceeded to devour it.

THE STRANGE LUNCHEON.

"This is a conquest in which our lords and masters the French shall have no share," she said, taking possession of a partridge which she placed on a Japanese plate; and she went with it to the other end of the room, where she squatted upon a velvet hassock with gold tassels, and proceeded to devour it.

I gazed at her in amazement, uncertain whether she was mad or was trying to mystify me.

"You are not eating?" she said, without moving.

"Your ladyship has not ordered me to do so," I replied.

"Oh! don't stand on ceremony," said she, continuing to eat with great zest.

The pie had such an alluring look and such a delicious odor that I listened to the philosophical arguments of common sense. I placed another partridge on another Japanese plate, which I rested on the keyboard of the piano, and began to eat with as much gusto as the signora.

"If this is not the castle of the Sleeping Beauty," I thought, "and if this cruel fairy is not the only living being in it, we shall soon see an uncle or a father or an aunt or a governess, or somebody who is supposed, in the eyes of honest folk, to serve as chaperon to this untamed creature. In case of any such apparition, I should like to know just how far this eccentric fashion of breakfasting on a piano, tête-à-tête with the young lady of the house, will be considered seemly. It matters little after all; I must find out just where these extravagant whims are likely to carry me, and if there is a woman's spite behind them, I will have my turn if I have to wait ten years."

As I reflected thus I watched my fair hostess over the piano. She was eating with superhuman appetite, and seemed to be in no wise possessed by the idiotic mania which young ladies have of eating only in secret, and pressing their lips together at table with a sentimental air, as if they were of a nature superior to ours. Lord Byron had not yet introduced the fashion of lack of appetite among the fair sex. So that my capricious signora abandoned herself with all her heart to the enjoyment of feasting, and in a few moments she returned to me and took a fillet of hare and a pheasant's wing from the dismantled pie. She looked at me without a smile, and said sententiously: "This east wind gives me an appetite."

"It seems that your ladyship is blessed with an excellent digestive apparatus," I observed.

"If one had not a good stomach at fifteen," she replied, "it would be as well to throw up the sponge."

"Fifteen!" I cried, looking at her closely and dropping my fork.

"Fifteen years and two months," she replied, returning to her hassock with her freshly-filled plate; "my mother is not yet thirty-two, and she married again last year. Tell me, isn't it strange that a mother should marry before her daughter? To be sure, if my darling little mother had chosen to wait for me to be married, she would have had to wait a long while. Who would ever marry a girl who, although she is beautiful, isstupidbeyond anything one can imagine?"

There was so much merriment and good-humor in the serious air with which she made fun of me; she was such a prettyloustig, that tall girl with the black eyes and the long curls falling over a neck as white as alabaster; her manner of sitting on her cushion was so graceful yet so chaste in its perfect naturalness, that all my suspicion and all my evil designs vanished. I had determined to empty the decanter of wine in order to put my scruples to sleep. I pushed the decanter away, and, having satisfied my appetite, rested my elbow on the piano and began to study her anew, and under a new aspect. That revelation as to her age had thrown all my ideas into confusion. When I have desired to form an opinion concerning a person, especially one of the fair sex, I have always considered it a matter of the utmost importance to ascertain that person's age as nearly as possible. Subtlety increases so rapidly in women that six months more or less often make the difference between the innocence which is deviltry and the deviltry which is innocence. Until then I had imagined that La Grimani was at least twenty years old. She was so tall and strong and dark, and there was so much self-assurance in her glance, in her bearing, in her every movement, that everybody made the same mistake at first sight. But on examining her more closely I realized my error. Her shoulders were broad and powerful, but her breast was still undeveloped. Although her whole attitude was womanly there were certain little ways and certain expressions of the face which revealed the child. Nothing more was needed than that hearty appetite, that total absence of coquetry, and the audacious impropriety of the tête-à-tête she had arranged to have with me, to make it clear to my eyes that I had to do, not as I had supposed at first, with a proud and crafty woman of the world, but with a mischievous boarding-school girl, and I thrust aside with horror the idea of abusing her imprudence.

I remained for a long while absorbed in this scrutiny, forgetting to reply to the significant challenge I had received. She looked at me earnestly, and I no longer thought of avoiding her glance, but of analyzing it. She had the loveliest eyes in the world, flush with her face, and very wide open; their glance was always sharp and direct, and grasped its object instantly. It was imperious but not overbearing, a very rare thing in a woman. It was the revelation and the expression of a fearless, proud, and sincere mind. It questioned all things with an air of authority, and seemed to say: "Conceal nothing from me: for I have nothing to conceal from anybody."

When she saw that I did not shrink from her gaze, she was startled but not frightened; and, rising abruptly, she invited the explanation which I desired to propose.

"Signor Lelio," she said, "if you have finished your breakfast, you will kindly tell me why you came here."

"I will obey you, signora," I replied, picking up her plate and glass, which she had left on the floor, and carrying them back to the piano; "but I beg your ladyship to tell me whether the piano-tuner shall answer you sitting at the instrument, or whether the actor Lelio shall stand before you, hat in hand, ready to retire after he has had the honor to talk with you."

"Signor Lelio will kindly sit in this chair," she said, pointing to one on the right hand of the fire-place, "and I in this," she added, taking her seat on the left side, facing me and about ten feet away.

"Signora," I said, as I sat down, "in order to obey you I must go back a little. About two months ago I was playing inRomeo and Julietat San Carlo. There was in one of the proscenium boxes——"

"I can refresh your memory," interposed La Grimani. "There was in one of the proscenium boxes on the right of the stage a young woman whom you considered beautiful; but on looking at her more closely, it seemed to you that her face was so devoid of expression that you shouted to one of the ladies on the stage, loud enough to be overheard by the young woman in question——"

"In heaven's name! signora," I interrupted, "do not repeat the words that escaped from me in my delirium, and let me tell you that I am subject to attacks of nervous irritation which make me almost insane. When I am in that condition everything offends me, everything causes me intense suffering——"

"I do not ask why it was your pleasure to announce so concisely your judgment of the young woman in the box; I simply ask you for the rest of the story."

"In order to be perfectly truthful and coherent, I must insist upon the prologue. Under the influence of a first attack of fever, the beginning of a serious illness from which I have hardly recovered, I fancied that I could read profound contempt and frigid irony on the incomparably lovely face of the young lady in the proscenium box. I was annoyed at first, then seriously disturbed, and at last completely upset, so that I lost my head and yielded to a brutal impulse in order to put an end to the fatal spell which benumbed all my faculties and paralyzed me at the most powerful and most important part of my rôle. Your ladyship must forgive me for an act of madness; I believe in magnetism, especially on those days when I am ill and when my brain is as weak as my legs. I fancied that the young lady in the box had an injurious influence over me; and during the cruel disease which took full possession of me on the day following my offence, I will confess that she often appeared in my delirium; but always haughty, always threatening, and promising me that I should pay dearly for the blasphemy that fell from my lips. Such, signora, is the first part of my story."

I made ready my shield to ward off a volley of epigrams by way of comment on this strange tale, which, although true, was most improbable, I must confess. But the young Grimani, gazing at me with a gentleness which I had no idea could be found in conjunction with her type of beauty, said to me, leaning a little heavily on the arm of her chair:

"Your face does in truth show signs of great suffering, Signor Lelio; and if I must confess the whole truth, when I recognized you yesterday, I said to myself that I must have observed you very carelessly on the stage; for you seemed to me then ten years younger; but to-day you seem no older than you did on the stage; but still I think that you look ill, and I am very, very sorry that I caused you any irritation."

I involuntarily moved my chair nearer to hers; whereupon she at once resumed her mocking and capricious tone.

"Let us pass to the second part of your story, Signor Lelio," she said, playing with her fan, "and be kind enough to tell me why, instead of avoiding the person the sight of whom is so hateful and prejudicial to you, you have come as far as this in pursuit of her."

"At this point the author finds himself in an embarrassing position," I replied, pushing back my chair, which moved very easily at the slightest turn in the conversation. "Shall I tell you that chance alone led me here? If I do, will your ladyship believe it? and if I say that it was not chance, will your ladyship tolerate such impertinence?"

"It matters very little to me," she rejoined, "whether it is chance, or magnetic attraction, as you will say, perhaps, that brings you to this neighborhood; I simply desire to know by what chance you became a piano-tuner?"

"The chance of inspiration, signora; a pretext to obtain admission to this house was all that I wanted."

"But why did you wish to be admitted to this house?"

"I will answer frankly if your ladyship will deign first to tell me what chance induced you to admit me, although you recognized me at the first glance?"

"The chance of caprice, Signor Lelio. I was bored to death here, alone with my cousin, or with a pious old aunt whom I hardly know; and while one is hunting and the other at church, I thought that I might venture to enliven by a mad freak the ghastly solitude in which I am left to pine away."

Once more my chair of its own motion approached hers, but I hesitated to take her hand. At that moment she seemed to me decidedly forward. There are some girls who are born women, and who are corrupt before they have lost their innocence.

"She is a child, beyond doubt," I thought, "but a child who is tired of being one, and I should be a great fool not to reply to allurements resorted to so coolly and boldly. Faith! I am sorry for the cousin! Why does he care more for hunting than for his kinswoman?"

But the signora paid no heed to the agitation that had laid hold of me. "Now the farce is at an end," she continued; "we have eaten my cousin's game and I have talked with an actor. I have fooled my aunt and my future spouse. Last week my cousin was furious because I praised you with what he considered too great warmth. Now, when he mentions you to me, and when my aunt says that the actors are all excommunicated in France, I will look at the floor with a modest and beatific expression, and laugh in my sleeve to think that I know Signor Lelio, and that I breakfasted with him, in this very room, without anyone's suspecting it. But now, Signor Lelio, you must tell me why you chose to obtain admission to this house by playing a false rôle?"

"Forgive me, signora—you just now said something which touched me deeply. You said, did you not, that you praised me last week withgreat warmth?"

"Oh! I only did it to make my cousin angry. I am not naturally enthusiastic."

When she flaunted me, it revived my zest for the adventure, and emboldened me.

"Since you are so frank with me, signora," I rejoined, "I will be equally frank with your ladyship. I sought admission to this house with the intention of atoning for my crime and humbly imploring the forgiveness of the divine beauty I blasphemed."

As I spoke, I slipped from my chair, and knelt at La Grimani's feet, and was very near taking possession of her lovely hands. She did not seem greatly moved by my action; but I saw that, to conceal a slight embarrassment, she pretended to be examining the Chinese mandarins whose gowns of purple and gold gleamed resplendent on her fan.

"Really, signor," she said, without looking at me, "you are very good to think that you owe me an apology. In the first place, if I have a stupid look, you are not at all to blame for noticing it; in the second place, if I have not, it is a matter of absolute indifference to me whether or not you are persuaded that I have."

"I swear by all the gods, and particularly by Apollo, that I said what I did only because I was angry or mad, or it may be because of a very different sentiment, which was then but just born and was already sowing confusion in my mind. I saw that you considered me detestable, and that you were not inclined to be at all indulgent to me; could I tranquilly resign myself to lose the only approbation which it would have been sweet and glorious for me to obtain? In a word, signora, I am here; I discovered your abode, and though I barely knew your name, I sought you, pursued you, and reached you in spite of distance and obstacles. I am here at your feet. Do you think that I would have surmounted such difficulties if I had not been tortured by remorse, not because of you, who justly disdain to consider the effect of your charms on a poor player like myself; but because of God, whose fairest work I insulted and undervalued?"

While I was speaking, I ventured to take one of her hands; but she suddenly sprang to her feet, saying:

"Rise, signor, rise! here is my cousin coming back from hunting."

Indeed, I had barely time to run to the piano and open it before Signor Ettore Grimani, in hunting costume and gun in hand, entered the room and deposited his well-filled game-bag at his cousin's feet.

"Oh! don't come so near me," said the signora; "you are horribly dirty, and all those bleeding creatures make me sick. Oh! Hector, go away, I beg, and take all these nasty great dogs with you; they smell of mud and soil the floor."

The cousin was fain to be content with that outburst of gratitude, and to go to his room and perfume himself at his leisure. But he had no sooner gone out than a sort of duenna appeared and informed the signora that her aunt had returned and wished to see her.

"I will go," La Grimani replied; "and do you, signor," she said, turning to me, "take this key away with you, as it is broken, and glue it firmly. You must bring it back to-morrow, and finish replacing the missing strings. I can count on you, signor? You will be sure to come?"

"Yes, signora, you may rely upon it," I replied; and I took my leave, carrying away the wrong key, which was not broken.

I was on hand promptly on the following day. But do not think, my friends, that I was in love with that young person; the utmost that can be said is that she attracted me. She was extremely lovely; but I saw her beauty with the eyes of the body, I did not feel it through the eyes of the soul; if, from time to time, I was on the point of falling in love with that childish petulance, my doubts soon returned, and I said to myself that a girl who lied so coolly to her cousin and her governess might well have lied to me; that, perhaps, she was twenty years old or more, as I had thought at first; and that it was quite likely that she had indulged in some previous escapades for which she had been secluded in that dull villa, with no other society than a pious old woman whose duty it was to scold her, and an excellent young cousin predestined to take upon his back, in his guilelessness, all her errors, past, present and to come.

I found her in the salon with the dear cousin and three or four hunting dogs, who came very near devouring me. The signora, who was nothing if not capricious, honored those noble beasts with very different treatment from that of the day before, and although they were hardly less dirty and disagreeable, she obligingly allowed them to lie, one by one, or all in a heap, on a large sofa of red velvet with gold fringe. From time to time she sat down in the midst of them, petting some and playfully teasing others.

Before long, I concluded that this revulsion of feeling toward the dogs was a bit of affectionate coquetry addressed to her cousin; for the fair-haired Signor Ettore seemed greatly flattered by it, and I don't know which he loved best, his cousin or his dogs.

She was bewilderingly vivacious, and she seemed to be keyed up to such a high pitch, the glances that she bestowed upon me in the mirror were so keen-edged, that I longed for the cousin's departure. And he did leave the room before long. The signora gave him an errand to do. She had to ask him several times, but he finally obeyed an imperious glance, accompanied by a: "Don't you propose to go?" uttered in a tone which he seemed altogether incapable of defying.

He had no sooner disappeared than I turned away from the piano and rose, looking in the signora's eyes to see whether I should go to her or wait for her to come to me. She, too, was standing, and seemed to be trying to read in my face what I was likely to do. But she gave me little encouragement, and as I fancied that her lips were partly open to give me a harsh lesson if I should be unlucky enough to lose my wits in that perilous engagement, I began to feel somewhat disturbed inwardly. I do not know why it was that that exchange of glances, at once alluring and distrustful, that effervescence of our whole being which kept us both as motionless as statues, that alternation of audacity and fear which paralyzed me at what was perhaps the decisive moment of my adventure, and even La Grimani's black velvet gown, and the bright sunlight which shone into the room through the dark curtains and expired in a fantastic blending of light and shadow at our feet—the hour, the burning atmosphere, and the restrained beating of my heart—all combined to bring vividly to my mind an analogous scene of my youth: Signora Bianca Aldini, in the shadow of her gondola, enchaining with a magnetic glance one of my feet on the shore of the Lido, the other on the boat. I felt the same mental bewilderment, the same inward agitation, the same desire, ready to give place to the same wrath. "Can it be," I thought, "that it was self-esteem that made me desire Bianca then, or is it love that makes me desire La Grimani to-day?"

It was not possible for me to rush forth into the fields, singing recklessly, as I had on that former occasion leaped ashore on the Lido, to revenge myself for a bit of innocent coquetry. There was no other course for me to adopt than to resume my seat, no other way for me to revenge myself than to begin again on the major fifth:A-mi-la-E-si-mi.

I must admit that that method of venting my spite could not afford me a signal triumph. An imperceptible smile fluttered about the corners of the signora's mouth when I bent my legs to sit down, and it seemed to me that I could read these pleasant words on her face: "Lelio you are a child."—But, when I abruptly rose again, ready to hurl the piano across the room and fly to her feet, I plainly read these terrible words in her black eye: "Signor, you are a madman."

"Signora Aldini," I reflected, "was twenty-two years old, I was fifteen or sixteen; now I am more than twenty-two. That Bianca should govern me absolutely was natural enough, but it is not natural that I should be made a fool of by this girl. So I must be cool."

I calmly resumed my seat, saying:

"Excuse me, signora, if I look at the clock. I cannot stay long, and this piano seems to be in sufficiently good condition for me to go about my business."

"In good condition!" she replied with unmistakable irritation. "You have put it in such good condition that I am afraid I can never play on it as long as I live. I am very angry about it. You undertook to tune it; you must do it, Signor Lelio, for your own reputation."

"Signora," I replied, "I care no more about tuning this piano than you do about playing on it. I obeyed your command to return, in order not to compromise you by putting an end to this pretence too suddenly. But your ladyship must understand that the jest cannot be prolonged forever; that by the third day it ceases to be amusing except to you, and that on the fourth it would be a little dangerous to me. I am neither so wealthy nor so renowned that I can afford to waste time. Will not your ladyship allow me to retire in a few moments; then a genuine tuner will come this afternoon and finish my work, saying that I am ill and have sent him in my place. I can find a substitute who will be grateful to me for providing him with a new customer, all without betraying our little secret, and without making myself known."

The signora did not say a word in reply; but she turned as pale as death, and again I felt that I was beaten. The cousin returned. I could not restrain a gesture of annoyance. The signora noticed it, and again she triumphed; and again, seeing that I did not propose to go, she amused herself by playing upon my inward agitation.

She became very rosy and animated once more. She plied her cousin with cajoleries which were so close to the line between affection and irony that soon neither he nor I knew what to think. Then she suddenly turned her back on him, and, coming to my side, requested me, in a low tone and with a mysterious air, to keep the piano a quarter of a tone below the pitch, because she had a contralto voice. Whom was she trying to impose upon—her cousin or myself—by telling me that great secret as if it were a matter of such importance? I was on the point of going up to Hector and shaking hands with him, for we seemed to me to cut an equally foolish and laughable figure. But I saw that the excellent youth attached more importance to the matter than I did, and he cast a sidelong glance at me with such a profound and crafty expression, that I had much difficulty in refraining from laughter. I answered La Grimani, under my breath and with a still more confidential air:

"I have anticipated your wishes, signora, and the piano is just in tune with the orchestra at San Carlo, where they lowered the pitch last season because of my cold."

Thereupon, the signora took her cousin's arm with a theatrical gesture, and hurriedly led him into the garden. As they walked back and forth in front of the house, and I could see their shadows on the curtain, I took my stand behind the curtain and listened to their conversation.

"That is exactly what I wanted to say to you, my dear cousin," the signora was saying. "This man has a strange, terrifying face; he has no idea what a piano is, and he will never finish tuning it. You will see! He is a mere adventurer, mark my words. We must keep our eyes on him, and do you hold your watch in your hand when he comes near you. I would take my oath that when I leaned over the piano, unsuspectingly, to tell him to lower the pitch, he put out his hand to steal my gold chain."

"Nonsense! you are joking, cousin! It is impossible that a thief should be so bold. That isn't what I want to say to you at all, and you pretend not to understand me."

"I pretend, Hector? You accuse me of pretending? I pretend! Come, tell me if you really think you are worth the trouble it would give me to make up a falsehood?"

"This severity is quite useless, cousin. It seems at all events that I am worth the trouble of seeking an opportunity to make humiliating speeches to me."

"But what are you talking about, I would ask, cousin? And why do you say that this man——"

"I say that this man is not a piano-tuner, that he is not tuning your piano, that he never tuned a piano in his life. I say that he never takes his eye off you, that he watches your every movement, that he breathes in every word you speak. I say that he must have seen you somewhere, at Naples or Florence, at the theatre or driving, and that he fell in love with you."

"And gained admittance here,in disguise, to see me, and perhaps to seduce me, the scoundrel, the villain!"

Having said thus much with great vehemence, the signora threw herself back on a bench, laughing uproariously. As I saw the cousin stalking toward the door of the salon, apparently in a furious passion, I returned to my post, and, arming myself with my tuning hammer, resolved to strike him down with it if he should attempt to insult me; for I had already set him down as one of the men who arrange matters so as to avoid fighting, and who call their servants when one challenges them within hearing of the antechamber.

"He will fall dead before he pulls that bell-rope," I thought, as I grasped the hammer and cast a rapid glance about me. But my adventure did not long retain this dramatic aspect. I saw the signora and her cousin, arm-in-arm once more, walking on the terrace, and pausing from time to time at the half-open glass door to look at me, she with a mocking, he with an embarrassed air. I no longer knew what they were saying to each other, and my wrath rose higher and higher in my throat.

Suddenly a pretty soubrette joined them on the terrace. The signora spoke to her with much animation, now laughing, now assuming an imperious tone. The soubrette seemed to hesitate; the cousin seemed to be urging the signora to do nothing extravagant. At last the maid came to me in some confusion, and said, blushing to the roots of her hair:

"Signor, the signora bids me say to you, in so many words, that you are an insolent person, and that you would do much better to tune the piano than to stare at her as you are doing. Pardon me, signor. I am very sure that it is a jest."

"And I take it as such," I replied; "but say to the signora that I present my profound respects to her, and that I beg her not to think me insolent enough to stare at her. I was not so much as thinking of her, and if I must tell you the truth, it was you, my lovely maid, whom I saw out in the field, and who engrossed me so that I forgot to go on with my work."

"I, signor," said the soubrette, blushing more hotly than ever, and hanging her head in her embarrassment. "How could I engross the signor?"

"Because you are a hundred times prettier than your mistress," I said, putting my arm about her and giving her a kiss before she had time to suspect my purpose.

She was a pretty village girl, the signora's foster sister. She too was dark and tall and slender, but timid in her manner, and as artless and gentle in her bearing as her young mistress was cunning and determined. She was thrown into such confusion by being embraced so unceremoniously before the signora, who had come to the door of the salon, followed by her idiotic cousin, that she fled, hiding her face in her blue apron with silver border. The signora, who was equally surprised to find that I took her impertinence so philosophically, stepped back, and the cousin, who had seen nothing, repeated several times the question: "What is it? What's the matter?"

The poor girl would not pause in her flight to reply, and the signora laughed a forced laugh which I pretended not to notice.

A few moments later she reappeared alone. Her face wore an expression which was meant to be severe, but was really confused and distressed.

"It is lucky for us both, signor," she said in a voice that trembled slightly, "that my cousin is simple-minded and gullible; for you must know that he is of a jealous and quarrelsome disposition."

"Really, signora?" I replied, gravely.

"Do not laugh at me, signor," she retorted angrily. "One may be easily deceived when one loves; but the name of Grimani stands for personal courage."

"I do not doubt it, signora," I replied in the same tone.

"I beg you, therefore, signor," she continued, still speaking with involuntary vehemence, "not to come here again; for all this jesting might end badly."

"That is as you please, signora," I replied, as imperturbably as before.

"It is evident, however, signor, that you find it very amusing; for you do not seem disposed to put an end to it."

"If I amuse myself, signora, it is by way of being obedient, as we all amuse ourselves in Italy under the reign of Napoleon the Great. I wished to retire an hour ago, and it was you who forbade it."

"I forbade it? Do you dare to say that I forbade it?"

"I intended to say, signora, that you did not think of it; for I expected that you would give me some sort of a plausible pretext for taking my leave in the midst of my task; and, for my own part, it was impossible for me to imagine such a pretext. It would be so entirely unnatural in the present condition of the piano, and I am so firmly resolved to do nothing that can possibly compromise you, that I will return to-morrow."

"You will do nothing of the kind."

"I beg your ladyship's pardon, I will return to-morrow."

"For what purpose, signor? And by what right?"

"I will return to gratify Signor Ettore's curiosity, for he is very much puzzled to know who I am; and I will return because you have yourself given me the right to face the man with whom you were pleased to make merry at my expense."

"Is that a threat, Signor Lelio?" she asked, concealing her fright beneath the cloak of pride.

"No, signora. A man who does not falter before another man is not of the threatening sort."

"But my cousin said nothing to you, signor; I did all this jesting against his will."

"But he is jealous and quarrelsome. Moreover, he is brave. Now, I am not jealous, signora, I have neither the right nor the desire to be. But I am quarrelsome, and it may be too that, although my name is not Grimani, I am a brave man; what do you know about it?"

"Oh! I have no doubt of it, Lelio!" she cried, in a tone that made me quiver from head to foot, it was so entirely different from what I had been hearing for two or three days.

I looked at her in amazement; she lowered her eyes with an air at once modest and proud. Once again I was disarmed.

"Signora," I said, "I will do whatever you choose, as you choose, and nothing that you do not choose."

She hesitated a moment.

"You cannot come again as a piano-tuner," said she; "if you do, you will compromise me, for my cousin will certainly tell my aunt that he suspects you of being a libertine in search of adventures; and, when my aunt hears it, she will tell my mother. And let me tell you Signor Lelio, that there is only one person in the world for whom I care in the least, and that is my mother; that there is only one thing in the world that I dread, and that is my mother's displeasure. And yet she brought me up very badly, as you see; she spoiled me shockingly; but she is so dear, so sweet, so loving, so sad—She loves me so dearly—if you only knew!"

A great tear glistened in the signora's black eye; she tried for some time to hold it back, but at last it fell on her hand. Deeply moved, assailed and overthrown by the formidable little god with whom one cannot afford to trifle, I put my lips to that lovely hand and greedily drank that sweet tear, a subtle poison which kindled a flame in my bosom. I heard the cousin returning, and, rising hurriedly, I said:

"Addio, signora, I will obey you blindly, I swear upon my honor; if your cousin insults me, I will swallow his insults; I will play a coward's part rather than cause you to shed a second tear."

With that I bowed to the ground and left the room. The cousin did not seem to me so bellicose as she had depicted him; for he saluted me first when I passed him. I walked slowly from the house, depressed beyond words; for I was in love, and I must not return. On becoming sincere, my love became generous.

I turned several times to catch a glimpse of the signora's velvet dress, but she had disappeared. As I was passing through the gate of the park, I saw her in a narrow path which followed the wall on the inside. She had run, in order to reach that point as soon as I did, and when I spied her she strove to assume a slow and pensive gait; but she was all out of breath and her lovely black hair was disarranged by the branches she had hurriedly thrust aside as she ran through the underbrush. I started to join her, but she made a sign to indicate that somebody was following her. I tried to pass through the gate, but I could not make up my mind to do it. Thereupon, she waved her hand to bid me farewell, accompanying the gesture with an unutterable glance and smile. At that moment she was more beautiful than I had ever seen her.

I placed one hand on my heart, the other on my forehead, and hurried away, mad with joy and love. I had seen the branches moving just behind the signora; but, there as elsewhere, the cousin arrived too late. I had disappeared.

I found in my room a letter from Checchina. "I had started to join you," she wrote, "and to rest a while from the fatigues of the stage in the pleasant shade of Cafaggiolo. I was upset at San Giovanni; I have nothing worse than a few bruises, but my carriage is broken. The bungling workmen in this village say they must have three days to repair it. Take your calèche and come and fetch me, unless you wish me to die of ennui in this muleteers' tavern."

I set out an hour later and reached San Giovanni at daybreak.

"How does it happen that you are alone?" I asked, trying to escape from her long arms and her sisterly embraces, which had become unendurable to me since my illness, because of the perfumes with which she saturated herself beyond all reason, whether because she fancied that she was imitating the great ladies, or because she loved passionately anything that appeals to the senses.

"I have had a row with Nasi," she said; "I have left him, and I don't want to hear any more about him!"

"It can't be very serious," I replied, "as you are on your way to take up your quarters in his house."

"On the contrary, it is very serious; for I have forbidden him to follow me."

"And apparently you intended to deprive him of the means of doing so, when you took his carriage to run away in, and broke it on the road."

"It's his own fault, for I had to keep urging the postilions. Why has he adopted the bad habit of following me? I would have liked to be killed by the accident, and have him arrive in time to see me die, and to learn what it is to thwart a woman like me."

"That is to say, a mad woman. But you will not have the pleasure of dying for revenge, in the first place, because you are not hurt, and secondly, because he has not run after you."

"Oh! he probably passed through here last night without suspecting that I was here, and you must have met him on your way. We will go and join him at Cafaggiolo."

"He is just crazy enough for that."

"If I were perfectly sure of it, I would like to remain here in hiding a week, just to worry him and make him think that I have gone to France, as I threatened to do."

"As you please, my dear: I salute you and leave my carriage at your service. For my own part, I have little liking for this region and this inn."

"If you were not a dolt, you would avenge me, Lelio!"

"Thanks! I have not been insulted; nor you either, I fancy."

"Oh! I have been mortally insulted, Lelio!"

"I suppose he refused to give you twenty thousand francs' worth of white gloves, and insisted on giving you diamonds worth fifty thousand instead; something like that, no doubt?"

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