Poor Nino!  He said he was ill with anxiety, and feared it would injure his voice.  He said that to break his engagement and come back to Rome would be ruin to him.  He must face it out, or take the legal consequences of a breach of contract, which are overwhelming to a young artist.  He detailed all the efforts he had made to find Hedwig, pursuing every little sign and clue that seemed to present itself; all to no purpose.  The longer he thought of it, the more certain he was that Hedwig was not in Paris or London.  She might be anywhere else in the whole world, but she was certainly not in either of those cities.  Of that he was convinced.  He felt like a man who had pursued a beautiful image to the foot of a precipitous cliff; the rock had opened and swallowed up his dream, leaving him standing alone in hopeless despair; and a great deal more poetic nonsense of that kind.

I do not believe I had ever realised what he so truly felt for Hedwig until I sat at my table with his letter before me, overcome with the sense of my own weakness in not having effectually checked this mad passion at its rise; or, since it had grown so masterfully, of my wretched procrastination in not having taken my staff in my hand and gone out into the world to find the woman my boy loved and bring her to him.  By this time, I thought, I should have found her.  I could not bear to think of his being ill, suffering, heart-broken,—­ruined, if he lost his voice by an illness,—­merely because I had not had the strength to do the best thing for him.  Poor Nino, I thought, you shall never say again that Cornelio Grandi has not done what was in his power to make you happy.

“That baron! an apoplexy on him! has illuded me with his promises of help,” I said to myself.  “He has no more intention of helping me or Nino than he has of carrying off the basilica of St. Peter.  Courage, Cornelio! thou must gird up thy loins, and take a little money in thy scrip, and find Hedwig von Lira.”

All that night I lay awake, trying to think how I might accomplish this end; wondering to which point of the compass I should turn, and, above all, reflecting that I must make great sacrifices.  But my boy must have what he wanted, since he was consuming himself, as we say, in longing, for it.  It seemed to me no time for counting the cost, when every day might bring upon him a serious illness.  If he could only know that I was acting, he would allow his spirits to revive and take courage.

In the watches of the night I thought over my resources, which, indeed, were meagre enough; for I am a very poor man.  It was necessary to take a great deal of money, for once away from Rome no one could tell when I might return.  My salary as professor is paid to me quarterly, and it was yet some weeks to the time when it was due.  I had only a few francs remaining,—­not more than enough to pay my rent and to feed Mariuccia and me.  I had paid at Christmas the last instalment due on my vineyard