Count Nasi accosted me as I left the theatre after the performance.

"Lelio," said he, "you are in love with the Grimani."

"Am I bewitched, in God's name," I cried, "and why is it that I cannot rid myself of that apparition?"

"You won't rid yourself of it for a long time either, poor boy," said Checchina, with a half-artless, half-mocking air; "that Grimani is the devil. Wait a moment," she added, taking my arm, "I know something about fever, and I will wager—Corpo della Madonna!"—she cried, turning pale, "you have a terrible attack of fever, my poor Lelio!"

"One always has the fever when one acts and sings in a way to give it to others," said the count; "come to supper with me, Lelio."

I declined; I was ill, in very truth. During the night I had a violent fever, and the next day I could not leave my bed. Checchina installed herself at my bedside and did not leave me all the time that I was ill.

Checchina was a young woman of twenty or thereabout, tall and large, and of a somewhat masculine type of beauty, although very white and fair. She was my sister and my kinswoman, that is to say, she came from Chioggia. Like me she was a fisherman's child and had long employed her strength beating the waters of the Adriatic with oars. A wild love of independence led her to use her fine voice as a means of assuring herself a free profession and a wandering life. She had run away from her father's house and begun to roam about the country on foot, singing in the public squares. I chanced to meet her at Milan, in a furnished lodging-house where she was singing for the guests at the table d'hôte. I recognized her as a Chioggian by her accent; I questioned her and remembered seeing her as a child; but I was careful to say nothing by which she could identify me as a kinsman, especially as that Daniele Gemello who had left the neighborhood rather suddenly, as the result of an unlucky duel. That duel cost a poor devil his life and his murderer many sleepless nights.

Allow me to pass rapidly over that incident, and to avoid awakening a bitter memory during our quiet evening. It will be enough for me to say to Zorzi that the practice of duelling with knives was still in full vigor at Chioggia in my youth, and the whole population acted as seconds. Duels were fought in broad daylight, on the public square, and insults were avenged by the wager of combat, as in the days of chivalry. My melancholy success exiled me from the province! for the podestat was far from lenient in such matters, and the law inflicted severe penalties upon the last remnants of those savage old customs. Perhaps this will explain why I always concealed the story of my early years, and why I travelled over the world under the name of Lelio, sending money secretly to my family, writing to them with the greatest caution, and disclosing to no one, not even to them, my means of subsistence, for fear that, by corresponding with me they might draw upon themselves the open hostility of those families in Chioggia whom the death of my assailant had angered more or less.

But, as my origin was betrayed by an ineradicable trace of the Venetian accent, I passed myself off as a native of Palestrina, and Checchina had adopted the habit of calling me her countryman, her cousin or her gossip, as it happened.

Thanks to my care and my assistance, Checchina rapidly acquired considerable talent, and at the time of my life of which I am now speaking, she had been engaged on honorable terms as a member of the troupe at San Carlo.