ator. With impatience she
waited from day to day for something fresh to happen, and by a thousand
petty tormenting ways let the old gentleman feel the effects of this
impatience; but though she thus tamed his amorous folly and made him
humble enough, she failed to reach the evil spirit of love that haunted
his heart. After she had made him experience to the full all the
tricksy humours of the most wayward girl, and then suffered him just
once to press his withered lips upon her tiny hand, he would swear in
his excessive delight that he would never cease fervently kissing the
Pope's toe until he had obtained dispensation to wed his niece, the
paragon of beauty and amiability. Marianna was particularly careful not
to interrupt him in these outbreaks of passion, for by encouraging
these gleams of hope in the old man's breast she fanned the flame of
hope in her own, for the more he could be lulled into the belief that
he held her fast in the indissoluble chains of love, the more easy it
would be for her to escape him.

Some time passed, when one day at noon Michele came stamping upstairs,
and, after he had had to knock a good many times to induce Signor
Pasquale to open the door, announced with considerable prolixity that
there was a gentleman below who urgently requested to see Signor
Pasquale Capuzzi, who he knew lived there.

"By all the blessed saints of Heaven!" cried the old gentleman,
exasperated; "doesn't the knave know that on no account do I receive
strangers in my own house?"

But the gentleman was of very respectable appearance, reported Michele,
rather oldish, talked well, and called himself Nicolo Musso.

"Nicolo Musso," murmured Capuzzi reflectively; "Nicolo Musso, who owns
the theatre beyond the Porta del Popolo; what can he want with me?"
Whereupon, carefully locking and bolting the door, he went downstairs
with Michele, in order to converse with Nicolo in the street before the
house.

"My dear Signor Pasquale," began Nicolo, approaching to meet him, and
bowing with polished ease, "that you deign to honour me with your
acquaintance affords me great pleasure. You lay me under a very great
obligation. Since the Romans saw you in my theatre--you, a man of the
most approved taste, of the soundest knowledge, and a master in art,
not only has my fame increased, but my receipts have doubled. I am
therefore all the more deeply pained to learn that certain wicked
wanton boys made a murderous attack upon you an