"How! You know that also?"
She raised her hand, as if in menace. "Know, Christopher, that little Hymen tolerates no man who has secrets from his wife. You tried to be silent, but betrayed yourself in your sleep. You do not know how often during the night you have called Eurydice in tones of plaintive music. Nor do you know how, as you appealed to the deities of the infernal regions, I shuddered at the power of your weird notes!"
"You heard, then," cried Cluck, enchanted. "And you—"
"My friend Prose, Prose calls with angry voice. Away to the dining-room! A man who has revelled all night with the Muses, needs refreshment in the morning. Nay—you need not frown like Jupiter Tonans—you must go with me to eat earthly food, before I taste your nectar and ambrosia. Come, and to reward your industry you shall have a glass of Lacrimae Christi from the cellar of the Duke of Bologna."
She drew him from the room, and succeeded in landing him at the breakfast-table.
"Now, I will not hear a word about art," said Marianne, when the servants had brought in the breakfast. "I am the physician, both of body and mind, and condemn you to a silence of fifteen minutes. Then you may talk."
"Of my opera, carissima?"
"Heaven forbid! of the wind and weather—nothing else. Now hush, and drink your chocolate."
So Gluck, obedient, drank his chocolate, and ate his biscuit and partridge-wing in silence.
All at once, the comfortable stillness was broken by a loud ringing of the door-bell, and a servant announced Signor Calzabigi.