break the line of nationalities.  A rain of nosegays fell about Vittoria; evvivas, bravas, shouts—­all the outcries of delirious men surrounded her.  Men and women, even among the hardened chorus, shook together and sobbed.  ‘Agostino!’ and ‘Rocco!’ were called; ‘Vittoria!’ ‘Vittoria!’ above all, with increasing thunder, like a storm rushing down a valley, striking in broad volume from rock to rock, humming remote, and bursting up again in the face of the vale.  Her name was sung over and over—­’Vittoria!  Vittoria!’ as if the mouths were enamoured of it.

‘Evviva la Vittoria a d’ Italia!’ was sung out from the body of the house.

An echo replied—­’"Italia a il premio della Vittoria!"’ a well-known saying gloriously adapted, gloriously rescued from disgrace.

But the object and source of the tremendous frenzy stood like one frozen by the revelation of the magic the secret of which she has studiously mastered.  A nosegay, the last of the tributary shower, discharged from a distance, fell at her feet.  She gave it unconsciously preference over the rest, and picked it up.  A little paper was fixed in the centre.  She opened it with a mechanical hand, thinking there might be patriotic orders enclosed for her.  It was a cheque for one thousand guineas, drawn upon an English banker by the hand of Antonio-Pericles Agriolopoulos; freshly drawn; the ink was only half dried, showing signs of the dictates of a furious impulse.  This dash of solid prose, and its convincing proof that her Art had been successful, restored Vittoria’s composure, though not her early statuesque simplicity.  Rocco gave an inquiring look to see if she would repeat the song.  She shook her head resolutely.  Her opening of the paper in the bouquet had quieted the general ebullition, and the expression of her wish being seen, the chorus was permitted to usurp her place.  Agostino paced up and down the lobby, fearful that he had been guilty of leading her to anticlimax.

He met Antonio-Pericles, and told him so; adding (for now the mask had been seen through, and was useless any further) that he had not had the heart to put back that vision of Camilla’s mother to a later scene, lest an interruption should come which would altogether preclude its being heard.  Pericles affected disdain of any success which Vittoria had yet achieved.  ‘Wait for Act the Third,’ he said; but his irritable anxiousness to hold intercourse with every one, patriot or critic, German, English, or Italian, betrayed what agitation of exultation coursed in his veins.  ‘Aha!’ was his commencement of a greeting; ’was Antonio-Pericles wrong when he told you that he had a prima donna for you to amaze all Christendom, and whose notes were safe and firm as the footing of the angels up and down Jacob’s ladder, my friends?  Aha!’

‘Do you see that your uncle is signalling to you?’ Countess Lena said to Wilfrid.  He answered like a man in a mist, and looked neither at her nor at the General, who, in default of his obedience to gestures, came good-humouredly to the box, bringing Captain Weisspriess with him.