unt compassionately; 'she is safe, and
owes it all to you. You behaved nobly, lad. The Don himself, with all
his Castitian blood, could not show a more courageous front.'

Gerald looked at the speaker, and whether at the tone of his voice, or
that the words seemed to convey an unseemly jest at such a moment, he
flushed till his cheek was crimson, and drawing himself up said: 'And
who are you? or by what right do you pronounce upon _my_ blood?'

'_Gherardi mio, caro fratellino_,' whispered the girl. 'It was he that
saved us, and he is a Prince!'

'For the first, I thank him,' said the youth. 'As to his rank, it is his
own affair and not mine.'

'Well spoken, faith!' said the noble. 'I tell thee, Giorgio,' added he
to a friend at his side, 'poets may well feel proud, when they see how
the very utterance of their noble sentiments engenders noble thoughts.
Look at that tatterdemalion, and think how came he by such notions.'

The abject expression of Babbo's gratitude, and the far more
demonstrative enunciations of old Gaetana's misery, here interrupted the
colloquy. In glowing terms she pictured the calamity that had befallen
them--a disaster irreparable for evermore. Never again would human
ingenuity construct such mechanism as that which illustrated Don
Callemacho's life. The conjuring tools, too, were masterpieces, not
to be replaced; and as to the drum, no contrivance of mere wood and
ram-skin ever would give forth such sounds again.

'Who knows, worthy Donna?' said the Count, with a grave half-smile.
'Your own art might teach you, that even the great drama of antiquity
has its imitators--some say superiors--in our day.

'I 'd say so for one!' cried Gerald, wiping the blood from his face.

'Would you so, indeed!' asked the Count.

'That would I, so long as glorious Alfieri lives,' said Gerald
resolutely.

'What hast thou read of thy favourite poet, boy?' asked the Count.

'What have I not?--the Saul, the Agamemnon, Oreste, Maria Stuart.'

'Ah, Signor Principe, you should hear him in Oreste,' broke in Gaetana;
'and he plays a solo on the trombone after the second act: he sets
every ass in the Campagna a-braying, when he comes to one part. Do it,
_Gherardi mio_; do it for his Highness. _Oh me!_ we have no trombone
left us,' and she burst out into a torrent of grief.

'Take these people to the inn at the Porta Rossa,' said the Count to one
of his servants. 'Let them be well cared for and attended to. Fetch
a