“Can you tell me—I am sure you could act?”
“Yes,” said Rosa, with a colour in her cheeks, and an odd light in her eyes, “I believe—I am sure I could. But I have no voice, there is no good in it. I never think of it now. However, stand up. Just sing through Masetto’s part, and I will be Zerlina. I know the music, but I shall croak like a raven. Now, then.”
In another moment Violante started with surprise, for, without change of dress, Rosa seemed to have disappeared, and the half-coquettish, half-penitent peasant-girl, who, bewildered for a moment by Don Giovanni’s flatteries, still is at heart faithful to her own lover, was there in her stead. She ran up to the amazed Violante, face and gesture full of pathetic entreaty. True, her voice was weak and harsh, but a hundred bits of byplay, which Violante had never dreamed of, seemed to come by nature—her face flushed, her eyes beamed.
“Rosa, it is marvellous! How can you do it?”
“Oh,” said Rosa, recalled, “I am only showing you. Don’t you see?—Now, do you try.”
“No, no—go on. The scene with Don Giovanni, that is what I cannot manage.”
“Oh, where he makes love to her, and she is just a little inconstant to Masetto. Very well, you are Don Giovanni,” and Rosa’s hesitating coquetry, struggle with herself, and bewitching airs were so surprising that Violante exclaimed:
“Why, I never saw you look so before.”
“No, of course not—I am not Rosa—I am Zerlina. However, you don’t know what I may have done in my time—when I was young.”
“But you do it so beautifully. Ah, what a pity you have not my voice—you would be the greatest prima donna in Italy!”