ACT I.
SCENE I.
A Saloon in FIESCO'S House. The distant sound of dancing and
music is heard.
LEONORA, masked, and attended by ROSA and ARABELLA, enters hastily.
LEONORA (tears off her mask). No more! Not another word! 'Tis as clear as day! (Throwing herself in a chair.) This quite overcomes me——
ARABELLA. My lady!
LEONORA (rising.) What, before my eyes! with a notorious coquette! In presence of the whole nobility of Genoa! (strongly affected.)—Rosa! Arabella! and before my weeping eyes!
ROSA. Look upon it only as what it really was—a piece of gallantry. It was nothing more.
LEONORA. Gallantry! What! Their busy interchange of glances—the anxious watching of her every motion—the long and eager kiss upon her naked arm, impressed with a fervor that left in crimson glow the very traces of his lips! Ha! and the transport that enwrapped his soul, when, with fixed eyes, he sat like painted ecstacy, as if the world around him had dissolved, and naught remained in the eternal void but he and Julia. Gallantry? Poor thing! Thou hast never loved. Think not that thou canst teach me to distinguish gallantry from love!
ROSA. No matter, Signora! A husband lost is as good as ten lovers gained.