and she me, but we don’t kiss and hug in a corner.  That is what the contessa taught me to do—­I thought it very beautiful.  It was our secret, do you see?  But she seems to have taught the marchese—­and it is a secret no more, and not beautiful at all.”  He begins to wonder to himself, and grows suddenly homesick under disenchantment.  He has many artless, touching things to say concerning his happiness with his sister in his own country, there far away on the lonely Adriatic shore.

I was doing my best with the part; Il Nanno, as Punchinello, was at my side watching and moving every turn of the dialogue; in the back of the scene were Truffaldino and the Furlana at their kissing.  The audience, quick to feel the pathos, was very quiet, and gave me courage.

“Go to your mistress, Brighella,” says Punchinello; “reproach her, pull her away.”

“No, no,” say I, “that would not be honourable.  That would show that I doubted her.  That would be an insult to her ladyship, and no comfort to me.”

There was a murmur of applause, low but audible, and that stir which I know is more enheartening to the player than all the bravas in the world; but just then, as if directed by some inward motion, my eyes wandered about the auditorium, and (as happens but rarely), I saw faces there.  In a box on the grand tier I saw Aurelia herself in a yellow silk gown and a hood of the same, half fallen from her dark hair.  There she sat, as if absorbing the light—­Aurelia, and no other, in a gallant company.  She was smiling, interested, eager.  Her lips were parted; I saw her little teeth; I saw the rise and fall of her white breast.  Starting violently, a sharp intense pain pierced my heart.  I shut my eyes and tried to recall myself, while the theatre was hushed, like death.  I felt myself swaying about, and to save myself from falling, stretched out my hand for some support.  Unfortunately I found it; for I caught and held the bony ridge of the nose of Il Nanno, which was just on the level of my elbow, and drove my fingers into it until he yelled with pain.  Risu solvuntur!  The audience rose at us in wild delight—­but I, in my horror and concern, knew nothing but that here was I, a poor fool in motley, and there, at some few paces from me, radiant as a star in the firmament, was the adorable being under whose maddening rays I had fallen, as struck by the sun.  I gave one short cry, and fell on my knees.  “Pardon, pardon, queen of my soul!” I began, when Il Nanno, beside himself with mortification, sprang at me like a wild beast and gripped my throat.  Had not the contessa and Truffaldino pulled him off me, I should have been strangled.  The audience hushed, the curtain fell.  I knew no more until I found myself lying on my strand paillasse at the inn and saw Belviso, yet in his skirt and spangles, leaning over me with vinegar in a sponge.