ead frogs'
legs that have since been the objects of experiment? Or if you come
down to so poor a thing as mere feeling, what are your feelings in
reading about Nino's deeds compared with what he felt in doing them? I
am not taking all this trouble to please you, but only for Nino's
sake, who is my dear boy. You are of no more interest or importance to
me than if you were so many dead frogs; and if I galvanise your
sensations, as you call them, into an activity sufficient to make you
cry or laugh, that is my own affair. You need not say "thank you" to
me. I do not want it. Ercole will thank you, and perhaps Nino will
thank me, but that is different.

I will not tell you about the interview that Ercole had with Hedwig,
nor how skilfully he rolled up his eyes and looked pathetic when he
spoke of Nino's poverty and of the fine part he had played in the
whole business. Hedwig is a woman, and the principal satisfaction she
gathered from Ercole's explanation was the knowledge that her friend
the baroness had lied to her in explaining those strange words she had
overheard. She knew it, of course, by instinct; but it was a great
relief to be told the fact by someone else, as it always is, even when
one is not a woman.

CHAPTER VIII

Several days passed after the _debut_ without giving Nino an
opportunity of speaking to Hedwig. He probably saw her, for he mingled
in the crowd of dandies in the Piazza Colonna of an afternoon, hoping
she would pass in her carriage and give him a look. Perhaps she did;
he said nothing about it, but looked calm when he was silent and
savage when he spoke, after the manner of passionate people. His face
aged and grew stern in those few days, so that he seemed to change on
a sudden from boy to man. But he went about his business, and sang at
the theatre when he was obliged to; gathering courage to do his best
and to display his powers from the constant success he had. The papers
were full of his praises, saying that he was absolutely without rival
from the very first night he sang, matchless and supreme from the
moment he first opened his mouth, and all that kind of nonsense. I
dare say he is now, but he could not have been really the greatest
singer living, so soon. However, he used to bring me the newspapers
that had notices of him, though he never appeared to care much for
them, nor did he ever keep them himself. He said he hankered for an
ideal which he would never attain, and I told hi