Quinto Lalli was the name by which the prima donna had presented the old gentleman who had shared her travelling-carriage to the Marchese Lamberto as her father.  And Quinto Lalli was his real name; but he was not really her father.  Nor had she any legitimate claim to the name of Lalli.  She had never been known by any other, however, during the whole of her theatrical career; and there were very few persons in any of the many cities where the Lalli was famous, who had any idea that the old man who always accompanied her was not her father.  Indeed, Bianca had so long been accustomed to call and to consider him as such, that she often well nigh forgot herself that he held no such relationship to her.

The real facts of the case were very simple, and had nothing romantic about them.  Old Lalli was a man of great musical gifts and knowledge.  He had been a singing-master in his day; an impresario too for a short time; and sometimes a kind of broker, or middle-man between singers in want of an engagement and managers seeking for “available talent;” and a hunter-up of talent not yet available, but which, it might be hoped, would one day become such.

It was in the pursuit of his avocations of this latter sort, that he had one day, about fifteen years before the date of the circumstances narrated in the last chapter, chanced to meet with a little girl, then some twelve years old, on the hopes of whose future success he had resolved to build his own fortunes.  It was time that he should find some foundation for them, if they were ever to be built at all, which most of those who knew Signor Quinto Lalli deemed not a little improbable; for he was of the sort of men who never do make fortunes.

He was fifty years old when he had met with the little girl in question, and had done nothing yet towards laying the foundations of any sort of fortune.  Unstable, improvident, unthrifty, fond of pleasure, and not fond of work, nothing had succeeded with him.  Nevertheless, a cleverer man in his own line, or a shrewder judge of the article he dealt in, than Quinto Lalli did not exist in all Italy.  And his judgment did not fail him when he fell in with little Bianca degli Innocenti.

Persons unacquainted with Italian things and ways might suppose that the above modification of the “particle noble” in Bianca’s family name was indicative of a very aristocratic origin.  Italians, however—­and specially Tuscans—­would draw a different conclusion from the premises.  The family “Degli Innocenti” is very frequently met with in Tuscany; but the bearers of the name do not, for the most part, take great heed of their family ties.  The “Innocenti,” in a word, is the name of the foundling-hospital in Florence; and those of whose origin nothing is known save that they have been brought up by that charity, are often called after it, and known by no other name.  Little Bianca’s father, or possibly her grandfather, must have been some such Jem, Jack, or Bob “of the Foundlings,” and left no other patronymic to his race.