Part 18

“Cataneo, you might bring your tenor and the prima donna together again,” said Capraja to his friend.

“Well, gentlemen,” said the Duke, “come to sup with me. We ought to reconcile the tenor and la Clarina; otherwise the season will be ruined in Venice.”

The invitation was accepted.

“Gondoliers!” called Cataneo.

“One minute,” said Vendramin. “Memmi is waiting for me at Florian’s; I cannot leave him to himself. We must make him tipsy to-night, or he will kill himself to-morrow.”

“Corpo santo!” exclaimed the Duke. “I must keep that young fellow alive, for the happiness and future prospects of my race. I will invite him, too.”

They all went back to Florian’s, where the assembled crowd were holding an eager and stormy discussion to which the tenor’s arrival put an end. In one corner, near a window looking out on the colonnade, gloomy, with a fixed gaze and rigid attitude, Emilio was a dismal image of despair.

“That crazy fellow,” said the physician, in French, to Vendramin, “does not know what he wants. Here is a man who can make of a Massimilla Doni a being apart from the rest of creation, possessing her in heaven, amid ideal splendor such as no power on earth can make real. He can behold his mistress for ever sublime and pure, can always hear within him what we have just heard on the seashore; can always live in the light of a pair of eyes which create for him the warm and golden glow that surrounds the Virgin in Titian’s Assumption,--after Raphael had invented it or had it revealed to him for the Transfiguration,--and this man only longs to smirch the poem.

“By my advice he must needs combine his sensual joys and his heavenly adoration in one woman. In short, like all the rest of us, he will have a mistress. He had a divinity, and the wretched creature insists on her being a female! I assure you, monsieur, he is resigning heaven. I will not answer for it that he may not ultimately die of despair.

“O ye women’s faces, delicately outlined in a pure and radiant oval, reminding us of those creations of art where it has most successfully competed with nature! Divine feet that cannot walk, slender forms that an earthly breeze would break, shapes too frail ever to conceive, virgins that we dreamed of as we grew out of childhood, admired in secret, and adored without hope, veiled in the beams of some unwearying desire,--maids whom we may never see again, but whose smile remains supreme in our life, what hog of Epicurus could insist on dragging you down to the mire of this earth!

“The sun, monsieur, gives light and heat to the world, only because it is at a distance of thirty-three millions of leagues. Get nearer to it, and science warns you that it is not really hot or luminous,--for science is of some use,” he added, looking at Capraja.

“Not so bad for a Frenchman and a doctor,” said Capraja, patting the foreigner on the shoulder. “You have in those words explained the thing which Europeans least understand in all Dante: his Beatrice. Yes, Beatrice, that ideal figure, the queen of the poet’s fancies, chosen above all the elect, consecrated with tears, deified by memory, and for ever young in the presence of ineffectual desire!”

“Prince,” said the Duke to Emilio, “come and sup with me. You cannot refuse the poor Neapolitan whom you have robbed both of his wife and of his mistress.”

This broad Neapolitan jest, spoken with an aristocratic good manner, made Emilio smile; he allowed the Duke to take his arm and lead him away.

Cataneo had already sent a messenger to his house from the cafe.

As the Palazzo Memmi was on the Grand Canal, not far from Santa Maria della Salute, the way thither on foot was round by the Rialto, or it could be reached in a gondola. The four guests would not separate and preferred to walk; the Duke’s infirmities obliged him to get into his gondola.

At about two in the morning anybody passing the Memmi palace would have seen light pouring out of every window across the Grand Canal, and have heard the delightful overture to Semiramide performed at the foot of the steps by the orchestra of the Fenice, as a serenade to la Tinti.

The company were at supper in the second floor gallery. From the balcony la Tinti in return sang Almavida’s Buona sera from Il Barbiere, while the Duke’s steward distributed payment from his master to the poor artists and bid them to dinner the next day, such civilities as are expected of grand signors who protect singers, and of fine ladies who protect tenors and basses. In these cases there is nothing for it but to marry all the corps de theatre.

Cataneo did things handsomely; he was the manager’s banker, and this season was costing him two thousand crowns.

He had had all the palace furnished, had imported a French cook, and wines of all lands. So the supper was a regal entertainment.

The Prince, seated next la Tinti, was keenly alive, all through the meal, to what poets in every language call the darts of love. The transcendental vision of Massimilla was eclipsed, just as the idea of God is sometimes hidden by clouds of doubt in the consciousness of solitary thinkers. Clarina thought herself the happiest woman in the world as she perceived Emilio was in love with her. Confident of retaining him, her joy was reflected in her features, her beauty was so dazzling that the men, as they lifted their glasses, could not resist bowing to her with instinctive admiration.

“The Duchess is not to compare with la Tinti,” said the Frenchman, forgetting his theory under the fire of the Sicilian’s eyes.

The tenor ate and drank languidly; he seemed to care only to identify himself with the prima donna’s life, and had lost the hearty sense of enjoyment which is characteristic of Italian men singers.

“Come, signorina,” said the Duke, with an imploring glance at Clarina, “and you, caro prima uomo,” he added to Genovese, “unite your voices in one perfect sound. Let us have the C of Qual portento, when light appears in the oratorio we have just heard, to convince my old friend Capraja of the superiority of unison to any embellishment.”

“I will carry her off from that Prince she is in love with; for she adores him--it stares me in the face!” said Genovese to himself.

What was the amazement of the guests who had heard Genovese out of doors, when he began to bray, to coo, mew, squeal, gargle, bellow, thunder, bark, shriek, even produce sounds which could only be described as a hoarse rattle,--in short, go through an incomprehensible farce, while his face was transfigured with rapturous expression like that of a martyr, as painted by Zurbaran or Murillo, Titian or Raphael. The general shout of laughter changed to almost tragical gravity when they saw that Genovese was in utter earnest. La Tinti understood that her companion was in love with her, and had spoken the truth on the stage, the land of falsehood.

“Poverino!” she murmured, stroking the Prince’s hand under the table.

“By all that is holy!” cried Capraja, “will you tell me what score you are reading at this moment--murdering Rossini? Pray inform us what you are thinking about, what demon is struggling in your throat.”