This speech was well worth the forty francs bestowed by Massimilla; she took out a second gold piece, and told Marianna she would write to Andrea Marcosini.
“Do not write to him, madame!” exclaimed Marianna. “And God grant you to always be beautiful!”
“Let us provide for them,” said the Princess to her husband; “for this man has remained faithful to the Ideal which we have killed.”
As he saw the gold pieces, Gambara shed tears; and then a vague reminiscence of old scientific experiments crossed his mind, and the hapless composer, as he wiped his eyes, spoke these words, which the circumstances made pathetic:
“Water is a product of burning.”
PARIS, June 1837.