“I think I would rather that you talked to me than merely looked at me. I do not invite people to look at me, and happily few people do. I am not conspicuous I am the insignificant one. There is Mrs. Thrale, for instance; she has been several times at our house, and every time she comes she inquires who is the little one.”
He smiled and held up his finger in imitation of the way she had rebuked him for talking too loud.
“H’sh; I am anxious to hear the Signora Gabrielli,” he said, and the expression that he made his face assume at that moment would have convinced anyone that he was giving all his attention to the singing—drinking in every note with the earnestness of an enthusiast. There was a certain boyish exaggeration in his expression that was very amusing to Fanny, though less observing persons would have been ready to accept it as evidence of the generous appreciation on the part of one great singer of the success of another.
So he remained until the cavatina had come to an end; and then he was loudest in his cry of “Brava!”
“It is a treat—a great—a sacred treat,” said he, turning to Fanny. “I do not think I ever heard that song before. Has it a name, I wonder?”
“If I mistake not it is from an opera in which a certain Roman tenore made a name for himself last year, in happy conjunction with Madame Gabrielli,” said Fanny.
“Is it possible? I had not heard of that circumstance,” said he, with a look of the most charming innocence in his large eyes. It was his hands that were most expressive, however, as he added:
“But it was last year, you say, mademoiselle? Ah, who is it that remembers an opera from one year to another? No one, except the impresario who has lost his good money, or somebody’s else’s money, over its production. Enough, the cantatrice has given us of her best, and is there now any reason why we should remain dumb? The great charm of the singing of these brilliant artistes of last year’s operas is that when they have sung, they have sung—they leave one nothing to think about afterward. Is not that so, mademoiselle?”
“They leave one nothing to think about—except their singing,” said Fanny. “For myself, I am still thinking of ‘Waft her, angels,’ although nearly half an hour must have passed since I heard the last notes. And it seems to me that when half a century will have passed I shall still be thinking of it.”
He did not offer her the conventional acknowledgment of a bow. He only looked at her with those large eyes of his; they were capable of expressing in a single glance all the tenderness of feeling of a poem.