Now, Michiella, by making love to Leonardo, Camillo’s associate, discovers that Camillo is conspiring against her father.  She utters to Leonardo very pleasant promises indeed, if he will betray his friend.  Leonardo, a wavering baritono, complains that love should ask for any return save in the coin of the empire of love.  He is seduced, and invokes a malediction upon his head should he accomplish what he has sworn to perform.  Camilla reposes perfect confidence in this wretch, and brings her more doubtful husband to be of her mind.

Camillo and Camilla agree to wear the mask of a dissipated couple.  They throw their mansion open; dicing, betting, intriguing, revellings, maskings, commence.  Michiella is courted ardently by Camillo; Camilla trifles with Leonardo and with Count Orso alternately.  Jealous again of Camilla, Michiella warns and threatens Leonardo; but she becomes Camillo’s dupe, partly from returning love, partly from desire for vengeance on her rival.  Camilla persuades Orso to discard Michiella.  The infatuated count waxes as the personification of portentous burlesque; he is having everything his own way.  The acting throughout—­ owing to the real gravity of the vast basso Lebruno’s burlesque, and Vittoria’s archness—­was that of high comedy with a lurid background.  Vittoria showed an enchanting spirit of humour.  She sang one bewitching barcarole that set the house in rocking motion.  There was such melancholy in her heart that she cast herself into all the flippancy with abandonment.  The Act was weak in too distinctly revealing the finger of the poetic political squib at a point here and there.  The temptation to do it of an Agostino, who had no other outlet, had been irresistible, and he sat moaning over his artistic depravity, now that it stared him in the face.  Applause scarcely consoled him, and it was with humiliation of mind that he acknowledged his debt to the music and the singers, and how little they owed to him.

Now Camillo is pleased to receive the ardent passion of his wife, and the masking suits his taste, but it is the vice of his character that he cannot act to any degree subordinately in concert; he insists upon positive headship!—­(allusion to an Italian weakness for sovereignties; it passed unobserved, and chuckled bitterly over his excess of subtlety).  Camillo cannot leave the scheming to her.  He pursues Michiella to subdue her with blandishments.  Reproaches cease upon her part.  There is a duo between them.  They exchange the silver keys, which express absolute intimacy, and give mutual freedom of access.  Camillo can now secrete his followers in the castle; Michiella can enter Camilla’s blue-room, and ravage her caskets for treasonable correspondence.  Artfully she bids him reflect on what she is forfeiting for him; and so helps him to put aside the thought of that which he also may be imperilling.