y a little; I warn you! Look how excited he is. No wonder. He
is--everybody knows it--he is la Vittoria's lover.'

Countess Lena uttered that sentence in Italian. The soft tongue sent it
like a coiling serpent through Wilfrid's veins. In English or in German
it would not have possessed the deadly meaning.

She may have done it purposely, for she and her sister Countess Anna
studied his face. The lifting of the curtain drew all eyes to the stage.

Rocco Ricci's baton struck for the opening of one of his spirited
choruses; a chorus of villagers, who sing to the burden that Happiness,
the aim of all humanity, has promised to visit the earth this day, that
she may witness the union of the noble lovers, Camillo and Camilla. Then
a shepherd sings a verse, with his hand stretched out to the impending
castle. There lives Count Orso: will he permit their festivities to pass
undisturbed? The puling voice is crushed by the chorus, which protests
that the heavens are above Count Orso. But another villager tells of
Orso's power, and hints at his misdeeds. The chorus rises in reply,
warning all that Count Orso has ears wherever three are congregated; the
villagers break apart and eye one another distrustfully, reuniting to the
song of Happiness before they disperse. Camillo enters solus. Montini, as
Camillo, enjoyed a warm reception; but as he advanced to deliver his
canzone, it was seen that he and Rocco interchanged glances of desperate
resignation. Camillo has had love passages with Michiella, Count Orso's
daughter, and does not hesitate to declare that he dreads her. The orphan
Camilla, who has been reared in yonder castle with her, as her sister, is
in danger during all these last minutes which still retain her from his
arms.

'If I should never see her--I who, like a poor ghost upon the shores of
the dead river, have been flattered with the thought that she would fall
upon my breast like a ray of the light of Elysium--if I should never see
her more!' The famous tenore threw his whole force into that outcry of
projected despair, and the house was moved by it: there were many in the
house who shared his apprehension of a foul mischance.

Thenceforward the opera and the Italian audience were as one. All that
was uttered had a meaning, and was sympathetically translated. Camilla
they perceived to be a grave burlesque with a core to it. The
quick-witted Italians caught up the interpretation in a flash. 'Count
Orso' Austria; 'Mic