“Servente!” Mr. Pericles ducked his head quite low, while his hand swept the floor with an imaginary cap. Malice had lighted up his features, and finding, after the first burst of sarcasm, that it was vain to indulge it toward an absent person, he altered his style. “Look,” he cried to Emilia, “it is Marini stops you and old Belloni—a conspirator, aha! Is it for an artist to conspire, and be carbonaro, and kiss books, and, mon Dieu! bon! it is Marini plays me zis trick. I mark him. I mark him, I say! He is paid by young Pole. I hold zat family in my hand, I say! So I go to be met by you, and on I go to Italy. I get a letter at Milano,—'Marini stop me at Dover,' signed 'Giuseppe Belloni.' Ze letter have been spied into by ze Austrians. I am watched—I am dogged—I am imprisoned—I am examined. 'You know zis Giuseppe Belloni?' 'Meine Herrn! he was to come. I leave word at Paris for him, at Geneve, at Stresa, to bring his daughter to ze Conservatoire, for which I pay. She has a voice—or she had.'”
“Has!” exclaimed Emilia.
“Had!” Mr. Pericles repeated.
“She has!”
“Zen sing!” with which thunder of command, Mr. Pericles gave up his vindictive narration of the points of his injuries sustained, and, pitching into a chair, pressed his fingers to his temples, frowning attention. His eyes were on the floor. Presently he glanced up, and saw Emilia's chest rising quickly. No voice issued.
“It is to commence,” cried Mr. Pericles. “Hein! now sing.”
Emilia laid her hand under her throat. “Not now! Oh, not now! When you have told me what those Austrians did to you. I want to hear; I am very anxious to hear. And what they said of my father. How could he have come to Milan without a passport? He had only a passport to Paris.”
“And at Paris I leave instructions for ze procuration of a passport over Lombardy. Am I not Antonio Pericles Agriolopoulos? Sing, I say!”
“Ah, but what voices you must have heard in Italy,” said Emilia softly. “I am afraid to sing after them. Si: I dare not.”
She panted, little in keeping with the cajolery of her tones, but she had got Mr. Pericles upon a theme serious to his mind.