“I have the happiness to announce to you, my friends, that our distinguished and well beloved Antonio has concluded to defer, indefinitely, his departure from Milan. You will dispense, therefore, with his farewell at present. I have reason to hope that he will ere long favor us with his performance through the whole piece of the Posto Abbandonato, and congratulate you, as well as myself, upon the certainty that he has no idea of abandoning his post!”
Loud, heartfelt and rapturous was the cheering that greeted this announcement. Tamburini heard, and wondered in his new born happiness how he could ever have yielded to despair.
Thus was a great artist rescued from self-despondency and restored to the world. The disappointment of his first project of turning recluse, was made to bring forth wholesome fruit. But the Marchese, whose plan of a surprise had so admirably succeeded, was never willing to give love all the credit it deserved. As to Madame Gioja, she knew the human heart, and wondered not at the result.
A short time after, the nuptials of Marietta and Antonio were celebrated. Though he cherished with veneration to the end of his life the memory of his mother, yet never again did he yield to that self-distrust and despair, which in the true artist is burying the talent committed to him.
It was near sunset on a bright and warm day in September, 182-, that a gentleman and lady, dressed in travelling attire, might have been seen descending the steps of a palazzo fronting on one of the principal canals of Venice. They were followed by an attendant, another having gone before with their luggage, and deposited it in a plain looking gondola fastened at the foot of the steps. The travellers took their seats in this gondola, and as they pushed off, observed two gentlemen ascend the steps of the house they had just quitted, and ring at the door. While they were talking with the porter, a turn in the canal carried the gondola out of sight.
“Who knows what we have escaped, Marietta, cara?” said the male passenger. “If my eyes inform me rightly, one of yon cavaliers is Signor Bordoni, a friend of the Impressario here, come doubtless to tempt me with some new piece, and urge me to stay.”
“I should not regret an accident that kept us longer in Venice,” observed the lady. “You are, I know, well appreciated.”
“We will return; oh, yes! We are not bidding a long adieu to the sea-born city. But I must not disappoint our friends at Trieste.”
“How lovely a scene!” exclaimed the lady, after a pause of some length.