The tears the Duchess wiped away as she quitted her box showed plainly that she was thinking of the Venice that is no more; and Vendramin kissed her hand.

The performance ended with the most extraordinary chaos of noises:  abuse and hisses hurled at Genovese and a fit of frenzy in praise of la Tinti.  It was a long time since the Venetians had had so lively an evening.  They were warmed and revived by that antagonism which is never lacking in Italy, where the smallest towns always throve on the antagonistic interests of two factions:  the Geulphs and Ghibellines everywhere; the Capulets and the Montagues at Verona; the Geremei and the Lomelli at Bologna; the Fieschi and the Doria at Genoa; the patricians and the populace, the Senate and tribunes of the Roman republic; the Pazzi and the Medici at Florence; the Sforza and the Visconti at Milan; the Orsini and the Colonna at Rome,—­in short, everywhere and on every occasion there has been the same impulse.

Out in the streets there were already Genovists and Tintists.

The Prince escorted the Duchess, more depressed than ever by the loves of Osiride; she feared some similar disaster to her own, and could only cling to Emilio, as if to keep him next her heart.

“Remember your promise,” said Vendramin.  “I will wait for you in the square.”

Vendramin took the Frenchman’s arm, proposing that they should walk together on the Piazza San Marco while awaiting the Prince.

“I shall be only too glad if he should not come,” he added.

This was the text for a conversation between the two, Vendramin regarding it as a favorable opportunity for consulting the physician, and telling him the singular position Emilio had placed himself in.

The Frenchman did as every Frenchman does on all occasions:  he laughed.  Vendramin, who took the matter very seriously, was angry; but he was mollified when the disciple of Majendie, of Cuvier, of Dupuytren, and of Brossais assured him that he believed he could cure the Prince of his high-flown raptures, and dispel the heavenly poetry in which he shrouded Massimilla as in a cloud.

“A happy form of misfortune!” said he.  “The ancients, who were not such fools as might be inferred from their crystal heaven and their ideas on physics, symbolized in the fable of Ixion the power which nullifies the body and makes the spirit lord of all.”

Vendramin and the doctor presently met Genovese, and with him the fantastic Capraja.  The melomaniac was anxious to learn the real cause of the tenor’s fiasco.  Genovese, the question being put to him, talked fast, like all men who can intoxicate themselves by the ebullition of ideas suggested to them by a passion.

“Yes, signori, I love her, I worship her with a frenzy of which I never believed myself capable, now that I am tired of women.  Women play the mischief with art.  Pleasure and work cannot be carried on together.  Clara fancies that I was jealous of her success, that I wanted to hinder her triumph at Venice; but I was clapping in the side-scenes, and shouted Diva louder than any one in the house.”