e performance. I went first to the barrier
separating us from the stalls, and looked for the Count in that part of
the theatre. He was not there. Returning along the passage, on the
left-hand side from the stage, and looking about me attentively, I
discovered him in the pit. He occupied an excellent place, some twelve
or fourteen seats from the end of a bench, within three rows of the
stalls. I placed myself exactly on a line with him. Pesca standing by
my side. The Professor was not yet aware of the purpose for which I had
brought him to the theatre, and he was rather surprised that we did not
move nearer to the stage.

The curtain rose, and the opera began.

Throughout the whole of the first act we remained in our position--the
Count, absorbed by the orchestra and the stage, never casting so much
as a chance glance at us. Not a note of Donizetti's delicious music
was lost on him. There he sat, high above his neighbours, smiling, and
nodding his great head enjoyingly from time to time. When the people
near him applauded the close of an air (as an English audience in such
circumstances always WILL applaud), without the least consideration for
the orchestral movement which immediately followed it, he looked round
at them with an expression of compassionate remonstrance, and held up
one hand with a gesture of polite entreaty. At the more refined
passages of the singing, at the more delicate phases of the music,
which passed unapplauded by others, his fat hands, adorned with
perfectly-fitting black kid gloves, softly patted each other, in token
of the cultivated appreciation of a musical man. At such times, his
oily murmur of approval, "Bravo! Bra-a-a-a!" hummed through the
silence, like the purring of a great cat. His immediate neighbours on
either side--hearty, ruddy-faced people from the country, basking
amazedly in the sunshine of fashionable London--seeing and hearing him,
began to follow his lead. Many a burst of applause from the pit that
night started from the soft, comfortable patting of the black-gloved
hands. The man's voracious vanity devoured this implied tribute to his
local and critical supremacy with an appearance of the highest relish.
Smiles rippled continuously over his fat face. He looked about him, at
the pauses in the music, serenely satisfied with himself and his
fellow-creatures. "Yes! yes! these barbarous English people are
learning something from ME. Here, there, and everywhere,