ful pride. What is there to
do? Nothing, save resignedly to prepare for his divorce from the
conspiratrix Camilla and espousals with Michiella. The cup is bitter,
and his song is mournful. He does the rarest thing a man will do in such
a predicament--he acknowledges that he is going to get his deserts. The
faithfulness and purity of Camilla have struck his inner consciousness.
He knows not where she may be. He has secretly sent messengers in all
directions to seek her, and recover her, and obtain her pardon: in vain.
It is as well, perhaps, that he should never see her more. Accursed, he
has cast off his sweetest friend. The craven heart could never beat in
unison with hers.

'She is in the darkness: I am in the light. I am a blot upon the light;
she is light in the darkness.'

Montini poured this out with so fine a sentiment that the impatience
of the house for sight of its heroine was quieted. But Irma and Lebruno
came forward barely under tolerance.

'We might as well be thumping a tambourine,' said Lebruno, during a
caress. Irma bit her underlip with mortification. Their notes fell flat
as bullets against a wall.

This circumstance aroused the ire of Antonio-Pericles against the
libretto and revolutionists. 'I perceive,' he said, grinning savagely,
'it has come to be a concert, not an opera; it is a musical harangue in
the marketplace. Illusion goes: it is politics here!'

Carlo Ammiani was sitting with his mother and Luciano breathlessly
awaiting the entrance of Vittoria. The inner box-door was rudely shaken:
beneath it a slip of paper had been thrust. He read a warning to him
to quit the house instantly. Luciano and his mother both counselled his
departure. The detestable initials 'B. R.,' and the one word 'Sbirri,'
revealed who had warned, and what was the danger. His friend's advice
and the commands of his mother failed to move him. 'When I have seen her
safe; not before,' he said.

Countess Ammiani addressed Luciano: 'This is a young man's love for a
woman.'

'The woman is worth it,' Luciano replied.

'No woman is worth the sacrifice of a mother and of a relative.'

'Dearest countess,' said Luciano, 'look at the pit; it's a cauldron.
We shall get him out presently, have no fear: there will soon be hubbub
enough to let Lucifer escape unseen. If nothing is done to-night, he
and I will be off to the Lago di Garda to-morrow morning, and fish and
shoot, and talk with Catullus.'

The countess gazed on he