the Bravi had already written to Pignaver as well as to the
lady for more funds, on the ground that forty days had passed without
affording them the opportunity they sought, and at two ducats a day
their account thus came to eighty ducats, already gone for unavoidable
expenses. Since they were paid twice over, it was quite natural that
their expenses should sometimes be doubled.

Meanwhile they watched their prey closely, and without any apparent
intention of disturbing the peace of the lovers' paradise they were very
often just strolling out or coming in exactly when Stradella and
Ortensia were passing through the gate in one direction or the other. In
this way Trombin saw Ortensia almost every day, and all four generally
exchanged a few friendly words before going on their way.

The beautiful Venetian and her husband were in the habit of going out
together either early in the morning, when they were sure not to meet
any of Stradella's fashionable acquaintances, or late in the June
afternoons, when all society congregated in certain fixed gathering
places and nowhere else, such as the gardens of the French Embassy,
which was established in the Villa Medici, or in the vast grounds of the
Villa Riario, which is now called Corsini, where Queen Christina of
Sweden had finally taken up her abode, and was giving herself airs right
royally as the chief living patroness and critic of all the arts and
sciences. To her, too, and to her court, Stradella had sung more than
once when he had last been in Rome, at which time she had lived there
little more than a year. Again, the precincts of the Vatican were to be
avoided, and the news-mongering Banchi Vecchi, where every smart gossip
in town resorted twice or thrice in the week to replenish his stock of
facts and anecdotes, true and untrue, and where he could buy the
sensational account of the latest execution, or elopement, or fraud.

The young couple avoided all such places carefully. Stradella knew the
city well, and led Ortensia to many lovely spots unknown to fashion, and
into many dim old churches, more than one of which had echoed to his own
music on great feast-days, from the Lateran and Santa Croce and Santa
Maria in Domnica, far away beyond the Colosseum, in the wilderness
within the southern wall of the city, to the fashionable Santa Maria in
Via, and San Marcello and the Pantheon.

Sometimes, if they had turned and looked into the distance behind them,
they might ha