sudden and
inspiriting influence which the eye and smile of the stranger exercised
on the debutante.

And while yet she gazed, and the glow returned to her heart, the
stranger half rose, as if to recall the audience to a sense of the
courtesy due to one so fair and young; and the instant his voice gave
the signal, the audience followed it by a burst of generous applause.
For this stranger himself was a marked personage, and his recent arrival
at Naples had divided with the new opera the gossip of the city. And
then as the applause ceased, clear, full, and freed from every fetter,
like a spirit from the clay, the Siren's voice poured forth its
entrancing music. From that time Viola forgot the crowd, the hazard,
the whole world,--except the fairy one over with she presided. It seemed
that the stranger's presence only served still more to heighten that
delusion, in which the artist sees no creation without the circle of his
art, she felt as if that serene brow, and those brilliant eyes, inspired
her with powers never known before: and, as if searching for a language
to express the strange sensations occasioned by his presence, that
presence itself whispered to her the melody and the song.

Only when all was over, and she saw her father and felt his joy, did
this wild spell vanish before the sweeter one of the household and
filial love. Yet again, as she turned from the stage, she looked back
involuntarily, and the stranger's calm and half-melancholy smile sank
into her heart,--to live there, to be recalled with confused memories,
half of pleasure, and half of pain.

Pass over the congratulations of the good Cardinal-Virtuoso, astonished
at finding himself and all Naples had been hitherto in the wrong on
a subject of taste,--still more astonished at finding himself and all
Naples combining to confess it; pass over the whispered ecstasies of
admiration which buzzed in the singer's ear, as once more, in her modest
veil and quiet dress, she escaped from the crowd of gallants that choked
up every avenue behind the scenes; pass over the sweet embrace of father
and child, returning through the starlit streets and along the deserted
Chiaja in the Cardinal's carriage; never pause now to note the tears and
ejaculations of the good, simple-hearted mother,--see them returned;
see the well-known room, venimus ad larem nostrum (We come to our own
house.); see old Gionetta bustling at the supper; and hear Pisani, as he
rouses the bar