‘"Botz,"’ said Luigi, submissively.

‘"Botz”—­“Botz”—­ass! fool! double idiot!  “Botzon!"’ Antonio-Pericles corrected him furiously, exclaiming to the sovereign skies, ’Though I pay for brains, can I get them!  No.  But make a fiasco, Luigi, and not a second ten for you, my friend:  and away, out of my sight, show yourself no more!’

Luigi humbly said that he was not the instrument of a fiasco.

Half spurning him, Antonio-Pericles snarled an end both to his advices and his prophetic disgust of the miserable tools furnished unto masterly minds upon this earth.  He paced forward and back, murmuring in French, ’Mon Dieu! was there ever such a folly as in the head of this girl?  It is her occasion:—­Shall I be a Star?  Shall I be a Cinder?  It is tomorrow night her moment of Birth!  No; she prefers to be extinguished.  For what?  For this thing she calls her country.  It is infamous.  Yes, vile little cheat!  But, do you know Antonio-Pericles?  Not yet.  I will nourish you, I will imprison you:  I will have you tortured by love, by the very devil of love, by the red-hot pincers of love, till you scream a music, and die to melt him with your voice, and kick your country to the gutter, and know your Italy for a birthplace and a cradle of Song, and no more, and enough!  Bah!’

Having thus delivered himself of the effervescence of his internal agitation, he turned sharply round upon Luigi, with a military stamp of the foot and shout of the man’s name.

‘It is love she wants,’ Antonio-Pericles resumed his savage soliloquy.  ’She wants to be kindled on fire.  Too much Government of brain; not sufficient Insurrection of heart!  There it is.  There it lies.  But, little fool! you shall find people with arms and shots and cannon running all up and down your body, firing and crying out “Victory for Love!” till you are beaten, till you gasp “Love! love! love!” and then comes a beatific—­oh! a heaven and a hell to your voice.  I will pay,’ the excited connoisseur pursued more deliberately:  ’I will pay half my fortune to bring this about.  I am fortified, for I know such a voice was sent to be sublime.’  He exclaimed in an ecstasy:  ‘It opens the skies!’ and immediately appended:  ‘It is destined to suffocate the theatres!’

Pausing as before a splendid vision:  ’Money—­let it go like dust!  I have an object.  Sandra Belloni—­you stupid Vittoria Campa!—­I have millions and the whole Austrian Government to back me, and you to be wilful, little rebel!  I could laugh.  It is only Love you want.  Your voice is now in a marble chamber.  I will put it in a palace of cedarwood.  This Ammiani I let visit you in the hope that he would touch you.

Bah! he is a patriot—­not a man!  He cannot make you wince and pine, and be cold and be hot, and—­Bah!  I give a chance to some one else who is not a patriot.  He has done mischief with the inflammable little Anna von Lenkenstein—­I know it.  Your proper lovers, you women, are the broad, the business lovers, and Weisspriess is your man.’