It might be very possibly that the little matters at which the impresario had hinted, were not altogether calumnious;—­that the lady might be one of those members of her profession who seek other triumphs besides those of her own scenic kingdom, and the story of whose lives in the different cities they visit is not confined to the walls and to the records of the theatre.  It might very well be that a little caution and looking after was needed in the matter, It would be as well, therefore, to take the thing in hand at once in a manner that should put the lady on a right course from the beginning;—­all which could be excellently well accomplished by at once taking her, as it were, into his own hands; and would, on the other hand, be endangered by throwing her from the first into those of the youngsters who purposed going out to meet her.

So the Marchese sacrificed himself; put off the anatomist and the musician; spent the morning in arranging all the details of the proposed cavalcade with the young men who were to compose it; and at two o’clock got into his open carriage to drive out towards Bagnacavallo.  The young Barone Manutoli and Ludovico were in the carriage with him.  But it was understood, as has been said, that they were to leave it when they met the heroine of the day, who was to enter Ravenna with the perfectly safe and unattackable Marchese alone in the carriage with her.

“I wonder whether she is as lovely as she is said to be?” said Manutoli, as they drove out beyond the crumbling and ivy-grown brick wall, which had helped to repel the attack of Odoacer the Goth; but which had, some thirteen hundred years ago, failed to keep out the mischief brought into the city by the comedian Empress Theodora, whose beauty had promoted her from the stage to the throne.

Absit omen!  And what, indeed, can there be common between Goths and Greeks of the Lower Empire, who lived thirteen hundred years ago, with the good Catholic subjects, and the quiet Catholic city of our Holy Father the Pope, in the nineteenth century!

At all events, it may be taken as very certain that no omen of the sort and no such thoughts were present to the minds or fancies of any of those who were about to form the escort of the modern actress.

“All who have ever seen her, speak in the most rapturous terms of her great beauty,” said Ludovico, in reply to his friend’s remark.

“Don’t be too sure about it, figliuoli mio, or it is likely enough you may be disappointed,” said the Marchese Lamberto.  “People repeat such things one after the other; there is a fashion in it.  I have always found that your stage beauty is as often as not no beauty, at all off it; and then you know stage work and the foot-lights are terribly quick users-up of beauty.  And La Lalli is not at the beginning of her career.  But what have we to do with all that! che diavolo!  She is a great singer; she comes here to delight our ears, not our eyes!”