ing breeze out
of the north, moved the tender branches of the passion-flowers, ruffled,
in spots, the surface of the grey waters towards the upper lake, and
wafted a perfume of cool woods.

When Luisa returned the Professor had been gone some time.

"Ah, here is _Sciora_ Luisa!" said Don Giuseppe, who was feeling quite
satisfied, having had his fill of primero, and he gently stroked the
modest rotundity of his ribs and belly. Then this little personage of
the world of long ago remembered the second object of his visit. He had
wished to speak a little word to Signora Luisa. The engineer had gone
out to take his usual short walk as far as the Tavorell hill, which he
jokingly called the St. Bernard, and Franco, after a glance at the moon
which was just then sparkling above the black brow of the Bisgnago, and
below, in the undulations of the water, began improvising on the piano
outpourings of ideal sorrow, that floated out of the open windows upon
the deep sonorousness of the lake. His musical improvisations were more
successful than his elaborate poems because in music his impulsive
feelings found a mode of expression more facile, more complete, and the
scruples, the uncertainties, the doubts which rendered the labour of
language most wearisome and slow, did not torment his fancy at the
piano. There he would give himself up, body and soul, to the poetic
rage, and quivering to the roots of his hair, his clear, speaking eyes
reflecting every little shade in the musical expression, while his face
worked with the continuous movement of inarticulate words, his hands,
though neither very agile nor very supple, would make the piano sing
ineffably.

At the present moment he was passing from one tone to another, breathing
hard, and putting all the strength of his intellect into those passages,
eviscerating the instrument, as it were, with his ten fingers, and
almost with his glowing eyes as well. He had begun to play under the
spell of the moonshine, but as he played, sad clouds had arisen from the
depths of his heart. Conscious that as a youth he had dreamed of glory
and that later he had humbly laid aside all hope of attaining it, he
said, almost to himself, with his sad and passionate music, that in him
there was indeed some glow of genius, some of the fire of creation seen
only by God, for not even Luisa exhibited that esteem for his intellect
which he himself lacked, but which he could have wished to find in her;
not even