“‘Old man,’ said he, ‘if I ran about Vienna looking after the husbands of all the ladies who sing on my stage, there would not be shoemakers enough in the city to sole my boots.’
“‘True,’ said I; ‘yet she is not as the others. I would stake my life on that.’
“‘Stake it on nothing so risky,’ cried he; ‘when you have seen as much of women as I have, you will not be so ready.’
“‘Accidente,’ exclaimed I, ‘this is no place for an honest man to cry his wares. One word more, Herr Dietz. You would tell me, I doubt not, that Mademoiselle Zlarin sings in the chorus of the opera?’
“‘I could tell you no such thing,’ he replied; ‘she has been given the part of Joseph in Mascagni’s “L’Amico Fritz.” She is no great singer, I admit. But there is the devil in the music she makes with her violin; and she acts a part with verve enough for six women. I could have filled this garden twenty times when she was playing. The men went mad about her. God knows, we had all the fine folks in the city here. Donnerwetter, it was a bad day for me when she received the offer to go to the Opernring, but I could not refuse. They said that the Emperor wished it. He heard her at Esterhazy’s house. And now she lives like a little Princess. Well, I am not the one to bear her ill-will. It is something to see a smile upon her pretty face.’
“I thanked him in my heart for this, and went away to seek Christine, as bewildered as man ever was.
“‘Dio mio,’ I said to myself, ‘that things should be thus with her—she who was a beggar reared in beggary! Well it was that I came to seek her in Vienna. She will not forget old Andrea who gave her bread. And he can snap his fingers at the priest to-day. If she be rich, what is the friendship of those at Jézero to her now? A plague upon them all—who turned an old man from their door.’
“For a truth, this was the way the thing appeared to me, excellency. I reflected that if Christine had married the Lord Count, it would have been a dreary business at the best. She would have been immured in the great house like a nun in her cell. She would have been cut off like one in a tomb from the companionship of her true friends. I made sure that she would be compelled to turn her face even from me, who gave her bread. But with Christine earning money for herself—Bon Dieu, what should she care for the gloomy man whose love had brought so many misfortunes upon her! I would be her protector always. Cost me what it might, I would be near her to help her when she had need of me. There was her husband, of course: but him, I judged, it would be easy to deal with. He would not forget that I had held my tongue when a word of mine might have delivered him to the Count. I would see that he learnt to respect me. I would not neglect to remind him that it was yet possible to make a hussar of him. Luck seemed to be mine at every turn. I walked through the crowded streets of the great city and cracked my fingers for joy as I went. The burden of years seemed to be gone from my shoulders.
“It was midday when I arrived at the Opera House. I had been saying to myself as I went along that after all I should not be surprised that such a strange gift of fortune had come to my child. Her sweet face alone was enough to win her that. And there had always been a devil in the music she had made from her crazy fiddle. I had seen this very opera, ‘L’Amico Fritz,’ played in my own city of Sebenico, and I had always said that an impresario would be lucky who could find a singer not only able to sing the part of Joseph, but also to play the violin while she sang. How it came about that little Christine had found a voice I knew not, for although she took a part in the Mass as a child she had received no schooling in this art. But that her mastery of the violin would be a fortune to her I felt sure. And this made me the readier to believe the story which Herr Dietz had told me.
“You know the new Opera at Vienna, signor? Yes! then you can assent when I maintain that there is no house like it in the world. Holy Virgin, what a sight to see! What painting—what gold—what splendour! I have been in that house but twice as a spectator, and I can never forget the things I saw—the lamps, hundreds, thousands; the pictures, oh! the colours of them; the great folk, what dresses! what splendid women; the scenery, the palaces, the green gardens—greener than any in my own Italy! And the music! Body of my soul, it is the choir of heaven come down to us while yet we live; it is the chanting of the spirits of joy and of laughter and of dreams.