This consideration at once decided the disposal of my evening.  I procured the tickets, leaving a note at the Professor’s lodgings on the way.  At a quarter to eight I called to take him with me to the theatre.  My little friend was in a state of the highest excitement, with a festive flower in his button-hole, and the largest opera-glass I ever saw hugged up under his arm.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Right-all-right,” said Pesca.

We started for the theatre.

V

The last notes of the introduction to the opera were being played, and the seats in the pit were all filled, when Pesca and I reached the theatre.

There was plenty of room, however, in the passage that ran round the pit—­precisely the position best calculated to answer the purpose for which I was attending the performance.  I went first to the barrier separating us from the stalls, and looked for the Count in that part of the theatre.  He was not there.  Returning along the passage, on the left-hand side from the stage, and looking about me attentively, I discovered him in the pit.  He occupied an excellent place, some twelve or fourteen seats from the end of a bench, within three rows of the stalls.  I placed myself exactly on a line with him.  Pesca standing by my side.  The Professor was not yet aware of the purpose for which I had brought him to the theatre, and he was rather surprised that we did not move nearer to the stage.

The curtain rose, and the opera began.

Throughout the whole of the first act we remained in our position—­ the Count, absorbed by the orchestra and the stage, never casting so much as a chance glance at us.  Not a note of Donizetti’s delicious music was lost on him.  There he sat, high above his neighbours, smiling, and nodding his great head enjoyingly from time to time.  When the people near him applauded the close of an air (as an English audience in such circumstances always will applaud), without the least consideration for the orchestral movement which immediately followed it, he looked round at them with an expression of compassionate remonstrance, and held up one hand with a gesture of polite entreaty.  At the more refined passages of the singing, at the more delicate phases of the music, which passed unapplauded by others, his fat hands, adorned with perfectly-fitting black kid gloves, softly patted each other, in token of the cultivated appreciation of a musical man.  At such times, his oily murmur of approval, “Bravo!  Bra-a-a-a!” hummed through the silence, like the purring of a great cat.  His immediate neighbours on either side—­hearty, ruddy-faced people from the country, basking amazedly in the sunshine of fashionable London—­seeing and hearing him, began to follow his lead.  Many a burst of applause from the pit that night started from the soft, comfortable patting of the black-gloved hands.