old, but much older than herself, loves him with such a _looking
up_ and venerating love! Maltravers stood a little apart from the
couple, on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and
thoughtful countenance. "How is it," said he, unconscious that he was
speaking half aloud, "that the commonest beings of the world should be
able to give us a pleasure so unworldly? What a contrast between those
musicians and this music. At this distance their forms are dimly seen,
one might almost fancy the creators of those sweet sounds to be of
another mould from us. Perhaps even thus the poetry of the Past rings
on our ears--the deeper and the diviner, because removed from the clay
which made the poets. O Art, Art! how dost thou beautify and exalt us;
what is nature without thee!"

"You are a poet, Signor," said a soft clear voice beside the
soliloquist; and Maltravers started to find that he had had unknowingly
a listener in the young Cesarini.

"No," said Maltravers; "I cull the flowers, I do not cultivate the
soil."

"And why not?" said Cesarini, with abrupt energy; "you are an
Englishman--_you_ have a public--you have a country--you have a living
stage, a breathing audience; we, Italians, have nothing but the dead."

As he looked on the young man, Maltravers was surprised to see the
sudden animation which glowed upon his pale features.

"You asked me a question I would fain put to you," said the Englishman,
after a pause. "_You_, methinks, are a poet?"

"I have fancied that I might be one. But poetry with us is a bird in the
wilderness--it sings from an impulse--the song dies without a listener.
Oh that I belonged to a _living_ country,--France, England, Germany,
Arnerica,--and not to the corruption of a dead giantess--for such is now
the land of the ancient lyre."

"Let us meet again, and soon," said Maltravers, holding out his hand.

Cesarini hesitated a moment, and then accepted and returned the
proffered salutation. Reserved as he was, something in Maltravers
attracted him; and, indeed, there was that in Ernest which fascinated
most of those unhappy eccentrics who do not move in the common orbit of
the world.

In a few moments more the Englishman had said farewell to the owner of
the villa, and his light boat skimmed rapidly over the tide.

"What do you think of the _Inglese_?" said Madame de Montaigne to her
husband, as they turned towards the house. (They said not a word about
the Milanese.)

"He has a