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.

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!