ssed. But he was forced to take some action at once, and he could
think of nothing better to do than to consult De Pretis.

To the maestro he poured out his woes and his plans. He exhibited to
him his position toward the baroness and toward Hedwig in the clearest
light. He conjured him to go to Hedwig and explain that the baroness
had threatened to unmask him, and thus deprive him of his means of
support,--he dared not put it otherwise,--unless he consented to sing
for her and come to her as often as she pleased. To explain, to
propitiate, to smooth,--in a word, to reinstate Nino in her good
opinion.

"Death of a dog!" exclaimed De Pretis; "you do not ask much! After you
have allowed your lady-love, your inamorata, to catch you saying you
are bound body and soul to another woman,--and such a woman! ye
saints, what a beauty!--you ask me to go and set matters right! What
the diavolo did you want to go and poke your nose into such a
mousetrap for? Via! I am a fool to have helped you at all."

"Very likely," said Nino calmly. "But meanwhile there are two of us,
and perhaps I am the greater. You will do what I ask, maestro; is it
not true? And it was not I who said it; it was the baroness."

"The baroness--yes--and may the maledictions of the inferno overtake
her," said De Pretis, casting up his eyes and feeling in his coat-tail
pockets for his snuff-box. Once, when Nino was younger, he filled
Ercole's snuff-box with soot and pepper, so that the maestro had a
black nose and sneezed all day.

What could Ercole do? It was true that he had hitherto helped Nino.
Was he not bound to continue that assistance? I suppose so; but if the
whole affair had ended then, and this story with it, I would not have
cared a button. Do you suppose it amuses me to tell you this tale? Or
that if it were not for Nino's good name I would ever have turned
myself into a common storyteller? Bah! you do not know me. A page of
quaternions gives me more pleasure than all this rubbish put together,
though I am not averse to a little gossip now and then of an evening,
if people will listen to my details and fancies. But those are just
the things people will not listen to. Everybody wants sensation
nowadays. What is a sensation compared with a thought? What is the
convulsive gesticulation of a dead frog's leg compared with the
intellect of the man who invented the galvanic battery, and thus gave
fictitious sensation to all the countless generations of d