The words pierced to her comprehension like a dagger-thrust to her heart.

“It is to save Emilio’s life,” added Vendramin.

“Come here,” said the doctor to Clarina.

The hapless singer rose and went to the other end of the table where, between Vendramin and the Frenchman, she looked like a criminal between the confessor and the executioner.

She struggled for a long time, but yielded at last for love of Emilio.

The doctor’s last words were: 

“And you must cure Genovese!”

She spoke a word to the tenor as she went round the table.  She returned to the Prince, put her arm round his neck and kissed his hair with an expression of despair which struck Vendramin and the Frenchman, the only two who had their wits about them, then she vanished into her room.  Emilio, seeing Genovese leave the table, while Cataneo and Capraja were absorbed in a long musical discussion, stole to the door of the bedroom, lifted the curtain, and slipped in, like an eel into the mud.

“But you see, Cataneo,” said Capraja, “you have exacted the last drop of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the string is pulled of a perfect unison.”

“And you, Capraja, who have squeezed ideas dry, are not you in the same predicament?  Do you not live riding the hobby of a cadenza?”

“I?  I possess the whole world!” cried Capraja, with a sovereign gesture of his hand.

“And I have devoured it!” replied the Duke.

They observed that the physician and Vendramin were gone, and that they were alone.

Next morning, after a night of perfect happiness, the Prince’s sleep was disturbed by a dream.  He felt on his heart the trickle of pearls, dropped there by an angel; he woke, and found himself bathed in the tears of Massimilla Doni.  He was lying in her arms, and she gazed at him as he slept.

That evening, at the Fenice,—­though la Tinti had not allowed him to rise till two in the afternoon, which is said to be very bad for a tenor voice,—­Genovese sang divinely in his part in Semiramide.  He was recalled with la Tinti, fresh crowns were given, the pit was wild with delight; the tenor no longer attempted to charm the prima donna by angelic methods.

Vendramin was the only person whom the doctor could not cure.  Love for a country that has ceased to be is a love beyond curing.  The young Venetian, by dint of living in his thirteenth century republic, and in the arms of that pernicious courtesan called opium, when he found himself in the work-a-day world to which reaction brought him, succumbed, pitied and regretted by his friends.

No, how shall the end of this adventure be told—­for it is too disastrously domestic.  A word will be enough for the worshipers of the ideal.

The Duchess was expecting an infant.