Irma’s shrill crescendos and octave-leaps, assisted by her peculiar attitudes of strangulation, came out well in this scene.  The murmurs concerning the sour privileges to be granted by a Lazzeruola were inaudible.  But there has been a witness to the stipulation.  The ever-shifting baritono, from behind a pillar, has joined in with an aside phrase here and there.  Leonardo discovers that his fealty to Camilla is reviving.  He determines to watch over her.  Camillo now tosses a perfumed handkerchief under his nose, and inhales the coxcombical incense of the idea that he will do all without Camilla’s aid, to surprise her; thereby teaching her to know him to be somewhat a hero.  She has played her part so thoroughly that he can choose to fancy her a giddy person; he remarks upon the frequent instances of girls who in their girlhood were wild dreamers becoming after marriage wild wives.  His followers assemble, that he may take advantage of the exchanged key of silver.  He is moved to seek one embrace of Camilla before the conflict:—­she is beautiful!  There was never such beauty as hers!  He goes to her in the fittest preparation for the pangs of jealousy.  But he has not been foremost in practising the uses of silver keys.  Michiella, having first arranged with her father to be before Camillo’s doors at a certain hour with men-at-arms, is in Camilla’s private chamber, with her hand upon a pregnant box of ebony wood, when she is startled by a noise, and slips into concealment.  Leonardo bursts through the casement window.  Camilla then appears.  Leonardo stretches the tips of his fingers out to her; on his knees confesses his guilt and warns her.  Camillo comes in.  Thrusting herself before him, Michiella points to the stricken couple ‘See! it is to show you this that I am here.’  Behold occasion for a grand quatuor!

While confessing his guilt to Camilla, Leonardo has excused it by an emphatic delineation of Michiella’s magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning, for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor bit of heart or honesty:  he is devoid of the inspiration of great patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian intrigue) has any love, it is for such a tool.  She cannot afford to lose him.  She pleads for him; and, as Camilla is silent on his account, the cynical magnanimity of Camillo is predisposed to spare a fangless snake.  Michiella withdraws him from the naked sword to the back of the stage.  The terrible repudiation scene ensues, in which Camillo casts off his wife.  If it was a puzzle to one Italian half of the audience, the other comprehended it perfectly, and with rapture.  It was thus that young Italy had too often been treated by the compromising, merely discontented, dallying aristocracy.  Camilla cries to him, ‘Have faith in me! have faith in me! have faith in me!’ That is the sole answer to his accusations, his threats of eternal loathing, and generally blustering sublimities.  She cannot defend herself; she only knows her innocence.  He is inexorable, being the guilty one of the two.  Turning from him with crossed arms, Camilla sings: