as so careful to abstain
from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays, to listen to a sermon every Sunday,
should conform his daily life far more strictly to the evangelical
ideal. He should rather fear than desire riches.

"A pleasant sail to you!" Uncle Piero called out from the terrace,
catching sight of the boat and Luisa seated in the prow in the
moonlight. Opposite black Bisgnago all Valsolda, from Niscioree to
Caravina lay spread out in the glory of the moon; all the windows of
Oria and of Albogasio, the arches of Villa Pasotti, the tiny white
houses of the most distant villages, Castello, Casarico, S. Mamette,
Drano, seemed to be gazing as if hypnotised, at the great, motionless
eye of the dead orb in the heavens.

Franco drew the oars into the boat. "Sing," said he.

Luisa had never studied singing, but she possessed a sweet mezzo-soprano
voice and a perfect ear, and had learned many operatic airs from her
mother, who had heard Grisi, Pasta, and Malibran, during the golden days
of Italian opera.

She began the air from _Anne Boleyn_:

Al dolce guidami
Castel natio.

The song of the soul which at first descends, little by little, and
finally, in greater sweetness gives itself up to its love, to rise
again, locked in his embrace, in an impulse of desire towards some
distant light which shall complete its happiness. She sang, and Franco,
carried away, fancied that she longed to be united to him in that lofty
region of the soul from which she had, until now, excluded him; that in
this perfect union, she longed to be guided by him towards the goal of
his ideals. A sob rose in his throat, and the rippling lake, the great
tragic mountains, those eyes of things fixed upon the moon, the very
light of the moon itself, everything, was filled with his indefinable
sentiment. And so, when beyond the broken image of the orb, silver
lights flashed for a moment as far as Bisgnago, and even into the
shadowy gulf of the Doi, he was moved, as if they had been mysterious
signals concerning him, which lake and moon were exchanging, while Luisa
finished the verse:

Ai verdi platani,
Al cheto rio
Che i nostri mormora
Sospi ancor.

* * * * *

Pasotti's voice called from the terrace--

"_Brava!_"

And Uncle Piero shouted--

"_Tarocco!_"

At the same moment they heard the oars of a boat coming from Porlezza,
and a bassoon mimicked the air of _Anne Boleyn_. Franco, who h