The colonel then resumed his customary position on the sofa, and Miss Nevil, after attempting several subjects of conversation, gave up all hope of inducing the fair Colomba to talk, and begged Orso to read her a canto out of Dante, her favourite poet.  Orso chose the canto of the Inferno, containing the episode of Francesca da Rimini, and began to read, as impressively as he was able, the glorious tiercets which so admirably express the risk run by two young persons who venture to read a love-story together.  As he read on Colomba drew nearer to the table, and raised her head, which she had kept lowered.  Her wide-open eyes, shone with extraordinary fire, she grew red and pale by turns, and stirred convulsively in her chair.  How admirable is the Italian organization, which can understand poetry without needing a pedant to explain its beauties!

When the canto was finished: 

“How beautiful that is!” she exclaimed.  “Who wrote it, brother?”

Orso was a little disconcerted, and Miss Lydia answered with a smile that it was written by a Florentine poet, who had been dead for centuries.

“You shall read Dante,” said Orso, “when you are at Pietranera.”

“Good heavens, how beautiful it is!” said Colomba again, and she repeated three or four tiercets which she had remembered, speaking at first in an undertone; then, growing excited, she declaimed them aloud, with far more expression than her brother had put into his reading.

Miss Lydia was very much astonished.

“You seem very fond of poetry,” she said.  “How I envy you the delight you will find in reading Dante for the first time!”

“You see, Miss Nevil,” said Orso, “what a power Dante’s lines must have, when they so move a wild young savage who knows nothing but her Pater.  But I am mistaken!  I recollect now that Colomba belongs to the guild.  Even when she was quite a little child she used to try her hand at verse-making, and my father used to write me word that she was the best voceratrice in Pietranera, and for two leagues round about.”

Colomba cast an imploring glance at her brother.  Miss Nevil had heard of the Corsican improvisatrici, and was dying to hear one.  She begged Colomba, then, to give her a specimen of her powers.  Very much vexed now at having made any mention of his sister’s poetic gifts, Orso interposed.  In vain did he protest that nothing was so insipid as a Corsican ballata, and that to recite the Corsican verses after those of Dante was like betraying his country.  All he did was to stimulate Miss Nevil’s curiosity, and at last he was obliged to say to his sister: 

“Well! well! improvise something—­but let it be short!”

Colomba heaved a sigh, looked fixedly for a moment, first at the table-cloth, and then at the rafters of the ceiling; at last, covering her eyes with her hand like those birds that gather courage, and fancy they are not seen when they no longer see themselves, she sang, or rather declaimed, in an unsteady voice, the following serenata: