“Good-day, Signor Cardegna.”  So they parted:  the count heading homeward toward Fillettino, and Nino turning back toward Trevi.

By this manoeuvre he conveyed to the count’s mind the impression that he had been to Fillettino for the day, and was returning to Trevi for the evening; and in reality the success of his enterprise, since his representations had failed, must depend upon Hedwig being comparatively free during the ensuing night.  He determined to wait by the roadside until it should be dark, allowing his mule to crop whatever poor grass she could find at this season, and thus giving the count time to reach Fillettino, even at the most leisurely pace.

He sat down upon the root of a tree, and allowed his mule to graze at liberty.  It was already growing dark in the valley; for between the long speeches of civility the two had employed and the frequent pauses in the interview, the meeting had lasted the greater part of an hour.

Nino says that while he waited he reviewed his past life and his present situation.

Indeed, since he had made his first appearance in the theatre, three months before, events had crowded thick and fast in his life.  The first sensation of a great public success is strange to one who has long been accustomed to live unnoticed and unhonoured by the world.  It is at first incomprehensible that one should have suddenly grown to be an object of interest and curiosity to one’s fellow-creatures, after having been so long a looker-on.  At first a man does not realise that the thing he has laboured over, and studied, and worked on, can be actually anything remarkable.  The production of the every-day task has long grown a habit, and the details which the artist grows to admire and love so earnestly have each brought with them their own reward.  Every difficulty vanquished, every image of beauty embodied, every new facility of skill acquired, has been in itself a real and enduring satisfaction for its own sake, and for the sake of its fitness to the whole,—­the beautiful perfect whole he has conceived.

But he must necessarily forget, if he loves his work, that those who come after, and are to see the expression of his thought, or hear the mastery of his song, see or hear it all at once; so that the assemblage of the lesser beauties, over each of which the artist has had great joy, must produce a suddenly multiplied impression upon the understanding of the outside world, which sees first the embodiment of the thought, and has then the after-pleasure of appreciating the details.  The hearer is thrilled with a sense of impassioned beauty, which the singer may perhaps feel when he first conceives the interpretation of the printed notes, but which goes over farther from him as he strives to approach it and realise it; and so his admiration for his own song is lost in dissatisfaction with the failings which others have not time to see.