e whole Austrian Government to back me, and you to be wilful,
little rebel! I could laugh. It is only Love you want. Your voice is now
in a marble chamber. I will put it in a palace of cedarwood. This Ammiani
I let visit you in the hope that he would touch you.

Bah! he is a patriot--not a man! He cannot make you wince and pine, and
be cold and be hot, and--Bah! I give a chance to some one else who is not
a patriot. He has done mischief with the inflammable little Anna von
Lenkenstein--I know it. Your proper lovers, you women, are the broad, the
business lovers, and Weisspriess is your man.'

Antonio-Pericles glanced up at the maestro's windows. 'Hark! it is her
voice,' he said, and drew up his clenched fists with rage, as if pumping.
'Cold as ice! Not a flaw. She is a lantern with no light in it--crystal,
if you like. Hark now at Irma, the stork-neck. Aie! what a long way it is
from your throat to your head, Mademoiselle Irma! You were reared upon
lemons. The split hair of your mural crown is not thinner than that voice
of yours. It is a mockery to hear you; but you are good enough for the
people, my dear, and you do work, running up and down that ladder of
wires between your throat and your head;--you work, it is true, you puss!
sleek as a puss, bony as a puss, musical as a puss. But you are good
enough for the people. Hola!'

This exclamation was addressed to a cavalier who was dismounting from his
horse about fifty yards down the street, and who, giving the reins to a
mounted servant, advanced to meet the Signor Antonio.

'It is you, Herr Captain von Weisspriess!'

'When he makes an appointment you see him, as a rule, my dear Pericles,'
returned the captain.

'You are out of uniform--good. We will go up. Remember, you are a
connoisseur, from Bonn--from Berlin--from Leipsic: not of the K.K. army!
Abjure it, or you make no way with this mad thing. You shall see her and
hear her, and judge if she is worth your visit to Schloss Sonnenberg and
a short siege. Good: we go aloft. You bow to the maestro respectfully
twice, as in duty; then a third time, as from a whisper of your soul.
Vanitas, vanitatis! You speak of the 'UT de poitrine.' You remark:
"Albrechtsberger has said---," and you slap your head and stop. They
think, "He is polite, and will not quote a German authority to us": and
they think, "He will not continue his quotation; in truth, he scornfully
considers it superfluous to talk of counterpoint to us poor