As he lifted the curtain, he heard a moan.  The heroic lover looked round and saw Clarina on her knees, her face hidden in the bed, choking with sobs.  Is it to be believed?  The singer was lovelier kneeling thus, her face invisible, than even in her confusion with a glowing countenance.  Her hair, which had fallen over her shoulders, her Magdalen-like attitude, the disorder of her half-unfastened dress, —­the whole picture had been composed by the devil, who, as is well known, is a fine colorist.

The Prince put his arm round the weeping girl, who slipped from him like a snake, and clung to one foot, pressing it to her beautiful bosom.

“Will you explain to me,” said he, shaking his foot to free it from her embrace, “how you happen to be in my palazzo?  How the impoverished Emilio Memmi—­”

“Emilio Memmi!” cried Tinti, rising.  “You said you were a Prince.”

“A Prince since yesterday.”

“You are in love with the Duchess Cataneo!” said she, looking at him from head to foot.

Emilio stood mute, seeing that the prima dona was smiling at him through her tears.

“Your Highness does not know that the man who had me trained for the stage—­that the Duke—­is Cataneo himself.  And your friend Vendramini, thinking to do you a service, let him this palace for a thousand crowns, for the period of my season at the Fenice.  Dear idol of my heart!” she went on, taking his hand and drawing him towards her, “why do you fly from one for whom many a man would run the risk of broken bones?  Love, you see, is always love.  It is the same everywhere; it is the sun of our souls; we can warm ourselves whenever it shines, and here—­now—­it is full noonday.  If to-morrow you are not satisfied, kill me!  But I shall survive, for I am a real beauty!”

Emilio decided on remaining.  When he signified his consent by a nod the impulse of delight that sent a shiver through Clarina seemed to him like a light from hell.  Love had never before appeared to him in so impressive a form.

At that moment Carmagnola whistled loudly.

“What can he want of me?” said the Prince.

But bewildered by love, Emilio paid no heed to the gondolier’s repeated signals.

If you have never traveled in Switzerland you may perhaps read this description with pleasure; and if you have clambered among those mountains you will not be sorry to be reminded of the scenery.

In that sublime land, in the heart of a mass of rock riven by a gorge, —­a valley as wide as the Avenue de Neuilly in Paris, but a hundred fathoms deep and broken into ravines,—­flows a torrent coming from some tremendous height of the Saint-Gothard on the Simplon, which has formed a pool, I know not how many yards deep or how many feet long and wide, hemmed in by splintered cliffs of granite on which meadows find a place, with fir-trees between them, and enormous elms, and where violets also grow, and