For many minutes the vociferous applause continued.  The stage was covered with flowers flung from all sides of the house.  The Marchese Lamberto whispered a word or two to Ludovico; and then the latter, leaning far out of the box, presented the magnificent bouquet to Bianca, who was smiling and thanking the public for their plaudits by repeated curtsies, and who came for it to the side of the stage.  She made a very low and graceful curtsey to Ludovico, as she took it from his hand; but her eyes thanked the Marchese Lamberto, who still remained close in his corner, for the gift.

The fact was that he was too much moved by violent and contending emotions to dare to trust himself to hand the flowers himself.  He knew that he was shaking in every limb; and, therefore, had told his nephew to give the bouquet; which, indeed, it was quite a matter of course that a successful prima donna should receive from that box on such an occasion.

Again and again the curtain had to be raised after it had descended in obedience to the cries of the spectators, who were determined to make the Diva’s triumph complete.  Again and again she had to step back on the stage and make yet one more bow and smile—­yet one more gracious smile.

During this delay the Marchese Lamberto slipped from his box and made his way behind the scenes.  “Can you feel as Bianca what you can so divinely express as Amina?” he whispered in her ear as he gave her his arm to lead her to her carriage at the stage-door.

“Try me as Amina was tried; and reward me as Amina was rewarded, and then see,” she replied in the same tone.

And so ended Bianca Lalli’s Carnival engagement at Ravenna.

CHAPTER IV

The Marchese Lamberto’s Correspondence

The next morning—­the morning of the Monday after the gala performance at the theatre—­the post brought to the Palazzo Castelmare a letter from Rome, before the Marchese had left his chamber.  The servant took it to his master’s room, found him still in bed, though awake, and left it on the table by his bedside.

The Marchese Lamberto was, and had been all his life, far too busy a man to be a late riser.  Italians, indeed, who do nothing all day long, are often very early risers.  Their, climate leads them to be so.  They sleep during hours which are less available for being out of doors—­for your Italian idler passes very little of his day in his own home—­and they are up and out during the delicious hours of the early morning.  But the Marchese Lamberto, whose days were filled with the multiplicity of occupations and affairs that have been described in a previous chapter, was wont, at all times of the year, to rise early.

On the present occasion, a sleepless night—­and such nights, also, were a new phenomenon in the Marchese’s life—­might have been a reason for his being late.  But he was not sleeping when his servant took the letter in to him.  The frame of mind in which he returned from the theatre has been described.  It lasted till he fell into a feverish sleep, soon after going to his bed.