lings,
maskings, commence. Michiella is courted ardently by Camillo; Camilla
trifles with Leonardo and with Count Orso alternately. Jealous again
of Camilla, Michiella warns and threatens Leonardo; but she becomes
Camillo's dupe, partly from returning love, partly from desire for
vengeance on her rival. Camilla persuades Orso to discard Michiella. The
infatuated count waxes as the personification of portentous burlesque;
he is having everything his own way. The acting throughout--owing to
the real gravity of the vast basso Lebruno's burlesque, and Vittoria's
archness--was that of high comedy with a lurid background. Vittoria
showed an enchanting spirit of humour. She sang one bewitching barcarole
that set the house in rocking motion. There was such melancholy in her
heart that she cast herself into all the flippancy with abandonment.
The Act was weak in too distinctly revealing the finger of the poetic
political squib at a point here and there. The temptation to do it of
an Agostino, who had no other outlet, had been irresistible, and he sat
moaning over his artistic depravity, now that it stared him in the face.
Applause scarcely consoled him, and it was with humiliation of mind that
he acknowledged his debt to the music and the singers, and how little
they owed to him.

Now Camillo is pleased to receive the ardent passion of his wife, and
the masking suits his taste, but it is the vice of his character that
he cannot act to any degree subordinately in concert; he insists upon
positive headship!--(allusion to an Italian weakness for sovereignties;
it passed unobserved, and chuckled bitterly over his excess of
subtlety). Camillo cannot leave the scheming to her. He pursues
Michiella to subdue her with blandishments. Reproaches cease upon her
part. There is a duo between them. They exchange the silver keys, which
express absolute intimacy, and give mutual freedom of access. Camillo
can now secrete his followers in the castle; Michiella can enter
Camilla's blue-room, and ravage her caskets for treasonable
correspondence. Artfully she bids him reflect on what she is forfeiting
for him; and so helps him to put aside the thought of that which he also
may be imperilling.

Irma's shrill crescendos and octave-leaps, assisted by her peculiar
attitudes of strangulation, came out well in this scene. The murmurs
concerning the sour privileges to be granted by a Lazzeruola were
inaudible. But there has been a witness to the stipul