very moment the door
opened,--a message from the Cardinal. Viola must go to his Eminence at
once. Her mother went with her. All was reconciled and settled; Viola
had her way, and selected her own opera. O ye dull nations of the North,
with your broils and debates,--your bustling lives of the Pnyx and
the Agora!--you cannot guess what a stir throughout musical Naples was
occasioned by the rumour of a new opera and a new singer. But whose
the opera? No cabinet intrigue ever was so secret. Pisani came back one
night from the theatre, evidently disturbed and irate. Woe to thine ears
hadst thou heard the barbiton that night! They had suspended him from
his office,--they feared that the new opera, and the first debut of
his daughter as prima donna, would be too much for his nerves. And his
variations, his diablerie of sirens and harpies, on such a night, made
a hazard not to be contemplated without awe. To be set aside, and on the
very night that his child, whose melody was but an emanation of his own,
was to perform,--set aside for some new rival: it was too much for a
musician's flesh and blood. For the first time he spoke in words upon
the subject, and gravely asked--for that question the barbiton, eloquent
as it was, could not express distinctly--what was to be the opera, and
what the part? And Viola as gravely answered that she was pledged to the
Cardinal not to reveal. Pisani said nothing, but disappeared with
the violin; and presently they heard the Familiar from the house-top
(whither, when thoroughly out of humour, the musician sometimes fled),
whining and sighing as if its heart were broken.

The affections of Pisani were little visible on the surface. He was not
one of those fond, caressing fathers whose children are ever playing
round their knees; his mind and soul were so thoroughly in his art that
domestic life glided by him, seemingly as if THAT were a dream, and
the heart the substantial form and body of existence. Persons
much cultivating an abstract study are often thus; mathematicians
proverbially so. When his servant ran to the celebrated French
philosopher, shrieking, "The house is on fire, sir!" "Go and tell my
wife then, fool!" said the wise man, settling back to his problems;
"do _I_ ever meddle with domestic affairs?" But what are mathematics to
music--music, that not only composes operas, but plays on the barbiton?
Do you know what the illustrious Giardini said when the tyro asked how
long it would t