his irresolution between his still existing affection for Consuelo, who
passes through all these things (and Zustiniani's siege of her) "in
maiden meditation, fancy-free"--all discharge themselves or play their
parts quite as they ought to do. But this comparatively quiet, though by
no means emotionless or unincidented, part of the story "ends in a
blow-up," or rather in a sink-down, for Anzoleto, on a stolen gondola
trip with Clorinda, third cantatrice and interim mistress of Zustiniani
(beautiful, but stupid, and a bad singer), meets the Count in another
gondola with Corilla herself, and in his fury rams his rival and the
perfidious one. Consuelo, who has at last had her eyes opened, quits
Venice and flees, with a testimonial from Porpora, to Germany. Even then
one hopes for the best, and acknowledges that at any rate something not
far from the best, something really good, has been given one for two
hundred well-filled pages--more than the equivalent of the first deck of
one of our old average "three-deckers."

But in the mind of experience such hopes are always accompanied by
fears, and alas! in this instance "the fears have it." There is on the
border of Bohemia a "Castle of the Giants"; and oh! how one wishes that
my Uncle Toby had allowed the sea to execute the ravages he deprecated
and sweep that castle into nothingness! When we get there Byronism is
back--nay, its papa and mamma, Lewisism and Radcliffism, are back
also--with their cardboard turrets and precipices and grottos; their
pine-woods reminding one of the little bristly green things, on round
cinnamon-coloured bases, of one's youth; their floods and falls so
obviously supplied at so much a thousand gallons by the nearest water
company, and their mystery-men and dwarfs and catalepsies and all the
rest of the weary old "tremblement." Count Christian of Rudolstadt is
indeed a gentleman and an almost too affectionate father; his brother,
Baron Frederick, a not disagreeable sportsman and _bon vivant_; their
sister, the Canoness, a not too theatrical old maid; and Frederick's
daughter, Amelie, though pert and not too good-natured, the most human
creature of them all, albeit with the humanities of a soubrette rather
than of a great lady. But what shall one say of Albert of Rudolstadt,
the heir, the betrothed of Amelie (this fact excusing much in her), and,
when Consuelo has joined the circle at Porpora's recommendation as
music-mistress and companion in the hi