He tapped angrily at the little ink-flask in his coat-pocket.  The first act, after scenes between false Camillo and Michiella, ends with the marriage of Camillo and Camilla;—­a quatuor composed of Montini, Vittoria, Irma, and Lebruno.  Michiella is in despair; Count Orso is profoundly sonorous with paternity and devotion to the law.  He has restored to Camilla a portion of her mother’s sequestrated estates.  A portion of the remainder will be handed over to her when he has had experience of her husband’s good behaviour.  The rest he considers legally his own by right of (Treaties), and by right of possession and documents his sword.  Yonder castle he must keep.  It is the key of all his other territories.  Without it, his position will be insecure. (Allusion to the Austrian argument that the plains of Lombardy are the strategic defensive lines of the Alps.)

Agostino, pursued by his terror of anticlimax, ran from the sight of Vittoria when she was called, after the fall of the curtain.  He made his way to Rocco Ricci (who had given his bow to the public from his perch), and found the maestro drinking Asti to counteract his natural excitement.  Rocco told Agostino, that up to the last moment, neither he nor any soul behind the scenes knew Vittoria would be able to appear, except that she had sent a note to him with a pledge to be in readiness for the call.  Irma had come flying in late, enraged, and in disorder, praying to take Camilla’s part; but Montini refused to act with the seconda donna as prima donna.  They had commenced the opera in uncertainty whether it could go on beyond the situation where Camilla presents herself.  ’I was prepared to throw up my baton,’ said Rocco, ’and publicly to charge the Government with the rape of our prima donna.  Irma I was ready to replace.  I could have filled that gap.’  He spoke of Vittoria’s triumph.  Agostino’s face darkened.  ‘Ha!’ said he, ’provided we don’t fall flat, like your Asti with the cork out.  I should have preferred an enthusiasm a trifle more progressive.  The notion of travelling backwards is upon me forcibly, after that tempest of acclamation.’

‘Or do you think that you have put your best poetry in the first Act?’ Rocco suggested with malice.

‘Not a bit of it!’ Agostino repudiated the idea very angrily, and puffed and puffed.  Yet he said, ’I should not be lamenting if the opera were stopped at once.’

‘No!’ cried Rocco; ’let us have our one night.  I bargain for that.  Medole has played us false, but we go on.  We are victims already, my Agostino.’

‘But I do stipulate,’ said Agostino, ’that my jewel is not to melt herself in the cup to-night.  I must see her.  As it is, she is inevitably down in the list for a week’s or a month’s incarceration.’