sts for the next carnival; but she would give him to
understand that she would only sing on condition that the composition
of at least one tragic opera was intrusted to me. The tragic was above
all others my special department, and so on, and so on. Lauretta on her
part maintained that it would be a pity if I did not follow my bent for
the light and the graceful, in a word, for _opera buffa_. She had been
engaged as first lady singer for this species of composition; and that
nobody but I should write the piece in which she was to appear was
simply a matter of course. You may fancy what my feelings were as I
stood between the two. In a word, you perceive that the company which I
had joined was the same as that which Hummel painted, and that just at
the moment when the priest is on the point of cutting short Lauretta's
_fermata_." "But did they not make any allusion," asked Edward, "to
your departure from them, or to the scathing letter?" "Not with a
single syllable," answered Theodore, "and you may be sure I didn't, for
I had long before banished all animosity from my heart, and come to
look back upon my adventure with the sisters as a merry prank. I did,
however, so far revert to the subject that I related to the priest how
that, several years before, exactly the same sort of mischance befell
me in one of Anfossi's arias as had just befallen him. I painted the
period of my connection with the sisters in tragi-comical colours, and,
distributing many a keen side-blow, I let them feel the superiority,
which the ripe experiences, both of life and of art, of the years that
had elapsed in the interval had given me over them. 'And a good thing
it was,' I concluded, 'that I did cut short that _fermata_, for it was
evidently meant to last through eternity, and I am firmly of opinion
that if I had left the singer alone, I should be sitting at the piano
now.' 'But, signor,' replied the priest, 'what director is there who
would dare to prescribe laws to the _prima donna_? Your offence was
much more heinous than mine, you in the concert hall, and I here in the
leafy arbour. Besides, I was only director in imagination; nobody need
attach any importance to that, and if the sweet fiery glances of these
heavenly eyes had not fascinated me, I should not have made an ass of
myself.' The priest's last words proved tranquillising, for, although
Lauretta's eyes had begun to flash with anger as the priest spoke,
before he had finished she was q