“But even that,” said Cataneo, joining them, “does not explain why, from being a divine singer, you should have become one of the most execrable performers who ever piped air through his larynx, giving none of the charm even which enchants and bewitches us.”

“I!” said the singer.  “I a bad singer!  I who am the equal of the greatest performers!”

By this time, the doctor and Vendramin, Capraja, Cataneo, and Genovese had made their way to the piazzetta.  It was midnight.  The glittering bay, outlined by the churches of San Giorgio and San Paulo at the end of the Giudecca, and the beginning of the Grand Canal, that opens so mysteriously under the Dogana and the church of Santa Maria della Salute, lay glorious and still.  The moon shone on the barques along the Riva de’ Schiavoni.  The waters of Venice, where there is no tide, looked as if they were alive, dancing with a myriad spangles.  Never had a singer a more splendid stage.

Genovese, with an emphatic flourish, seemed to call Heaven and Earth to witness; and then, with no accompaniment but the lapping waves, he sang Ombra adorata, Crescentini’s great air.  The song, rising up between the statues of San Teodoro and San Giorgio, in the heart of sleeping Venice lighted by the moon, the words, in such strange harmony with the scene, and the melancholy passion of the singer, held the Italians and the Frenchman spellbound.

At the very first notes, Vendramin’s face was wet with tears.  Capraja stood as motionless as one of the statues in the ducal palace.  Cataneo seemed moved to some feeling.  The Frenchman, taken by surprise, was meditative, like a man of science in the presence of a phenomenon that upsets all his fundamental axioms.  These four minds, all so different, whose hopes were so small, who believed in nothing for themselves or after themselves, who regarded their own existence as that of a transient and a fortuitous being,—­like the little life of a plant or a beetle,—­had a glimpse of Heaven.  Never did music more truly merit the epithet divine.  The consoling notes, as they were poured out, enveloped their souls in soft and soothing airs.  On these vapors, almost visible, as it seemed to the listeners, like the marble shapes about them in the silver moonlight, angels sat whose wings, devoutly waving, expressed adoration and love.  The simple, artless melody penetrated to the soul as with a beam of light.  It was a holy passion!

But the singer’s vanity roused them from their emotion with a terrible shock.

“Now, am I a bad singer?” he exclaimed, as he ended.

His audience only regretted that the instrument was not a thing of Heaven.  This angelic song was then no more than the outcome of a man’s offended vanity!  The singer felt nothing, thought nothing, of the pious sentiments and divine images he could create in others,—­no more, in fact, than Paganini’s violin knows what the player makes it utter.  What they had seen in fancy was Venice lifting its shroud and singing—­and it was merely the result of a tenor’s fiasco!