"Spirto gentil dei sogni miei"--the long sweet notes sighed themselves
to death on his lips, falling and rising magically like a mystic angel
song, and swaying their melody out into the world of lights and
listeners; so pathetic, so heart-breaking, so laden with death and
with love, that it was as though all the sorrowing souls in our poor
Rome breathed in one soft sigh together. Only a poor monk dying of
love in a monastery, tenderly and truly loving to the bitter end. Dio
mio! there are perhaps many such. But a monk like this, with a face
like a conqueror, set square in its whiteness, and yet so wretched to
see in his poor patched frock and his bare feet; a monk, too, not
acting love, but really and truly ready to die for a beautiful woman
not thirty feet from him in the house; above all, a monk with a voice
that speaks like the clarion call of the day of judgment in its wrath,
and murmurs more plaintively and sadly in sorrow than ever the poor
Peri sighed at the gates of Paradise--such a monk, what could he not
make people feel?

The great crowd of men and women sat utterly stilled and intent till
he had sung the very last note. Not a sound was heard to offend the
sorrow that spoke from the boy's lips. Then all those people seemed to
draw three long breaths of wonder--a pause, a thrilling tremor in the
air, and then there burst to the roof such a roar of cries, such a
huge thunder of hands and voices, that the whole house seemed to rock
with it, and even in the street outside they say the noise was
deafening.

Alone on the stage stood Nino, his eyes fixed on Hedwig von Lira in
her box. I think that she alone of all that multitude made no sound,
but only gripped the edge of the balcony hard in her white hands, and
leaned far forward with straining eyes and beating heart to satisfy
her wonder. She knew well enough, now, that there was no mistake. The
humble little Professor Cardegna, who had patiently explained Dante
and Leopardi to her for months, bowing to the ground in her presence,
and apologising when he corrected her mistakes, as though his whole
life was to be devoted to teaching foreigners his language; the
decently clad young man, who was always pale, and sometimes pathetic
when he spoke of himself, was no other than Giovanni Cardegna the
tenor, singing aloud to earth and heaven with his glorious great
voice--a man on the threshold of a European fame, such as falls only
to the lot of a singer or a conqueror.