"'The time arrived at last when they had to leave us: then it was that I fully realized what Lauretta had become to me, and how impossible it was for me to be parted from her. After she had been unusually smorfiosa with me, she would be kind and caressing, but always in such a fashion that, although my blood would seethe, the coldness which I could feel that she brought to bear upon me was sufficient to prevent me from throwing myself at her feet with passionate avowals of love.
"'I had a pretty fair tenor voice then: it had never had any cultivation, but it was beginning to improve, and I used to sing, with Lauretta, numbers of those tender Italian duets whose name is legion. We were singing one of those duets one day; the time of her departure was at hand--
"Senza di te, ben mio!
Vivere non poss' io."
"'Who could have resisted this? I threw myself at Lauretta's feet, wild with despair.
"'She helped me to rise. "Why should we part, dear friend?" she said. I listened in delighted amazement. She said I had much better go with her and Teresina to the Residenz. If I meant to devote myself to music altogether, I should have to quit my little native town some day or other.
"'Picture to yourself a person who has bidden good-bye to life and hope, and is falling down some black, fathomless abyss; but, at the very instant when he expects the crash which is to dash him in pieces, lo and behold! he is in a beautiful bower of roses, with hundreds of little many-tinted lights dancing round him, and saying, "Darling! you're still alive, you see!" These were my sensations at that moment. To go with them to the Residenz was the one prominent, tangible idea of my life.
"'I shan't weary you by describing how I set about proving to my uncle the absolute necessity of my going to the Residenz--no such very great distance, when all was said. He agreed at last, and said he would go with me! Here was an unexpected baulk to my little plans. I dared not tell him I was going with the ladies; but luckily one of his attacks of bronchitis came to my rescue.
"'I started off in the stage-coach, but got out at the first change of horses, and waited there for the coming of my goddesses. I had plenty of money in my pocket, so that I was able to make all my arrangements. My idea was to escort the ladies on horseback, like a paladin of Romance; so I managed to hire a steed--not particularly grand to look at, but, as his owner assured me, a good serviceable animal,--and at the appointed time I mounted him, and rode out to meet the two cantatrices. Ere long, their little double-seated phæton was seen coming quietly along. The two sisters were on the front seat, and behind sat their maid, little fat Gianna, a brown Neapolitan. The carriage was crammed with all sorts of boxes, band-boxes, portmanteaus, and so forth, and two pug-dogs, on Gianna's lap, yapped at me as I rode up.
"Everything went swimmingly till we got to the last stage from the Residenz, but there my horse was seized with the remarkable idea that he ought to go home to his stable. A conviction that severe measures are seldom effectual in such conjunctures induced me to try every description of mild persuasion that I could think of. The perverse animal was proof against all my gentle remonstrances. I wanted to go forward; he wanted to go back. All that I could accomplish in the circumstances was that, instead of retrograding, he kept describing circles. Teresina leant out of the carriage, laughing most heartily; whilst Lauretta put her hands before her eyes and screamed, as if I were in the utmost danger. I jammed my spurs into the brute's sides, and, ere I could say Jack Robinson, found myself on the broad of my back on the turnpike road, with the horse standing over me, his long neck stretched out, surveying me with an expression of calm derision.