Alone on the stage stood Nino, his eyes fixed on Hedwig von Lira in her box.  I think that she alone of all that multitude made no sound, but only gripped the edge of the balcony hard in her white hands, and leaned far forward with straining eyes and beating heart to satisfy her wonder.  She knew well enough, now, that there was no mistake.  The humble little Professor Cardegna, who had patiently explained Dante and Leopardi to her for months, bowing to the ground in her presence, and apologising when he corrected her mistakes, as though his whole life was to be devoted to teaching foreigners his language; the decently clad young man, who was always pale, and sometimes pathetic when he spoke of himself, was no other than Giovanni Cardegna the tenor, singing aloud to earth and heaven with his glorious great voice—­a man on the threshold of a European fame, such as falls only to the lot of a singer or a conqueror.  More, he was the singer of her dreams, who had for months filled her thoughts with music and her heart with a strange longing, being until now a voice Only.  There he stood looking straight at her,—­she was not mistaken,—­as though to say, “I have done it for you, and for you only.”  A woman must be more than marble to feel no pride in the intimate knowledge that a great public triumph has been gained solely for her sake.  She must be colder than ice if she cannot see her power when a conqueror loves her.

The marble had felt the fire, and the ice was in the flame at last.  Nino, with his determination to be loved, had put his statue into a very fiery furnace, and in the young innocence of his heart had prepared such a surprise for his lady as might have turned the head of a hardened woman of the world, let alone an imaginative German girl, with a taste for romance—­or without; it matters little.  All Germans are full of imagination, and that is the reason they know so much.  For they not only know all that is known by other people, but also all that they themselves imagine, which nobody else can possibly know.  And if you do not believe this, you had better read the works of one Fichte, a philosopher.

I need not tell you any more about Nino’s first appearance.  It was one of those really phenomenal successes that seem to cling to certain people through life.  He was very happy and very silent when it was over; and we were the last to leave the theatre, for we feared the enthusiasm of the crowd.  So we waited till everyone had gone, and then marched home together, for it was a fine night.  I walked on one side of Nino and De Pretis on the other, all of us carrying as many flowers as we could; Mariuccia came behind, with the cat under her shawl.  I did not discover until we reached home why she had brought the beast.  Then she explained that, as there was so much food in the kitchen in anticipation of our supper, she had been afraid to leave the cat alone in the house, lest we should find nothing left to eat when we returned.  This was sufficiently prudent for a scatter-brained old spendthrift like Mariuccia.