"What a pity it is that they will never give us at the Italiens any operas by Rossini but those we know. That is really very fine music!"
And Gambara would smile.
Only a few days since, this unhappy couple had to pay the trifling sum of thirty-six francs as arrears of rent for the cock-loft in which they lived resigned. The grocer would not give them credit for the brandy with which Marianna plied her husband to enable him to play. Gambara was, consequently, so unendurably bad that the ears of the wealthy were irresponsive, and the tin bottle-stand remained empty.
It was nine o'clock in the evening. A handsome Italian, the Principessa Massimilla Di Varese, took pity on the poor creatures; she gave them forty francs and questioned them, discerning from the woman's thanks that she was a Venetian. Prince Emilio would know the history of their woes, and Marianna told it, making no complaints of God or men.
"Madame," said Gambara, as she ended, for he was sober, "we are the victims of our own superiority. My music is good. But as soon as music transcends feeling and becomes an idea, only persons of genius should be the hearers, for they alone are capable of responding to it! It is my misfortune that I have heard the chorus of angels, and believed that men could understand those strains. The same thing happens to women when their love assumes a divine aspect: men cannot understand them."
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 be always 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: