there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling together one upon
another. The water, taking a mighty leap, is broken into a hundred
falls, dashed to spray on the boulders; it sparkles in a myriad jets
against a mass that has fallen from the heights that tower over the
ravine exactly in the middle of the road that has been so irresistibly
cut by the most formidable of active forces.

If you have formed a clear idea of this landscape, you will see in those
sleeping waters the image of Emilio's love for the Duchess, and in the
cascades leaping like a flock of sheep, an idea of his passion shared
with la Tinti. In the midst of his torrent of love a rock stood
up against which the torrent broke. The Prince, like Sisyphus, was
constantly under the stone.

"What on earth does the Duke do with a violin?" he wondered. "Do I owe
this symphony to him?"

He asked Clara Tinti.

"My dear child,"--for she saw that Emilio was but a child,--"dear
child," said she, "that man, who is a hundred and eighteen in the parish
register of vice, and only forty-seven in the register of the Church,
has but one single joy left to him in life. Yes, everything is
broken, everything in him is ruin or rags; his soul, intellect, heart,
nerves,--everything in man that can supply an impulse and remind him of
heaven, either by desire or enjoyment, is bound up with music, or rather
with one of the many effects produced by music, the perfect unison of
two voices, or of a voice with the top string of his violin. The old
ape sits on my knee, takes his instrument,--he plays fairly well,--he
produces the notes, and I try to imitate them. Then, when the
long-sought-for moment comes when it is impossible to distinguish in the
body of sound which is the note on the violin and which proceeds from
my throat, the old man falls into an ecstasy, his dim eyes light up with
their last remaining fires, he is quite happy and will roll on the floor
like a drunken man.

"That is why he pays Genovese such a price. Genovese is the only tenor
whose voice occasionally sounds in unison with mine. Either we really do
sing exactly together once or twice in an evening, or the Duke imagines
that we do; and for that imaginary pleasure he has bought Genovese.
Genovese belongs to him. No theatrical manager can engage that tenor
without me, nor have me to sing without him. The Duke brought me up on
purpose to gratify that whim; to him I owe my talent, my beauty,--my
fortune, no do