Nino thought nothing about his riches, because he was racking his brains for some good expedient whereby he might see the contessina and speak with her.  He had ascertained from De Pretis that the count was not so angry as he had expected, and that Hedwig was quite satisfied with the explanations of the maestro.  The day after the foregoing conversation he wrote a note to her, wherein he said that if the Contessina de Lira would deign to be awake at midnight that evening she would have a serenade from a voice she was said to admire.  He had Mariuccia carry the letter to the Palazzo Cormandola.

At half-past eleven, at least two hours after supper, Nino wrapped himself in my old cloak and took the guitar under his arm.  Rome is not a very safe place for midnight pranks, and so I made him take a good knife in his waistbelt; for he had confided to me where he was going.  I tried to dissuade him from the plan, saying he might catch cold; but he laughed at me.

A serenade is an everyday affair, and in the street one voice sounds about as well as another.  He reached the palace, and his heart sank when he saw Hedwig’s window dark and gloomy.  He did not know that she was seated behind it in a deep chair, wrapped in white things, and listening for him against the beatings of her heart.  The large moon seemed to be spiked on the sharp spire of the church that is near her house, and the black shadows cut the white light as clean as with a knife.  Nino had tuned his guitar in the other street, and stood ready, waiting for the clocks to strike.  Presently they clanged out wildly, as though they had been waked from their midnight sleep, and were angry; one clock answering the other, and one convent bell following another in the call to prayers.  For two full minutes the whole air was crazy with ringing, and then it was all still.  Nino struck a single chord.  Hedwig almost thought he might hear her heart beating all the way down the street.

“Ah, del mio dolce ardor bramato ogetto,” he sang,—­an old air in one of Gluck’s operas that our Italian musicians say was composed by Alessandro Stradella, the poor murdered singer.  It must be a very good air, for it pleases me; and I am not easily pleased with music of any kind.  As for Hedwig, she pressed her ear to the glass of the window that she might not lose any note.  But she would not open nor give any sign.  Nino was not so easily discouraged, for he remembered that once before she had opened her window for a few bars he had begun to sing.  He played a few chords, and breathed out the “Salve, dimora casta e pura,” from Faust, high and soft and clear.  There is a point in that song, near to the end, where the words say, “Reveal to me the maiden,” and where the music goes away to the highest note that anyone can possibly sing.  It always appears quite easy for Nino, and he does not squeak like a dying pig as all the other tenors do on that note.  He was looking up as he sang it, wondering whether it would have any effect.  Apparently Hedwig lost her head completely, for she gently opened the casement and looked out at the moonlight opposite, over the carved stone mullions of her window.  The song ended, he hesitated whether to go or to sing again.  She was evidently looking towards him; but he was in the light, for the moon had risen higher, and she, on the other side of the street, was in the dark.