'Francesca da Rimini' was engraved upon the frame. The old subject was strangely treated. Trees in full leaf were cut short by the frame so that only their luxuriant foliage and blossom-laden boughs were visible, and above them against a background of dull, gloomy storm-clouds floated two forms closely intertwined.
Never had Erika seen two such figures living, as it were, upon canvas; never had she seen writhing despair so revealed in every limb and muscle. Her first sensation was one of almost angry repulsion for the artist.
"What do you say to it?" the old Countess, who had followed Erika, asked, rather loudly, as was her wont. "A masterpiece, is it not?"
Erika turned away. She was very pale, and she trembled from head to foot.
"It is wonderfully beautiful," she murmured, in a low voice, "but it is unpleasant. I feel as if it were a sin to look at it."
As they crossed the Piazza San Stefano on their way home, at the foot of Manin's statue stood a group of five street-singers, two men and three women, all over fifty, both men blind, one of the women one-eyed, another hump-backed, and the third so corpulent that she looked like a caricature.
These five monsters, the women with guitars, the men with violins, were accompanying themselves in a love-song, their mouths wide open, and the drawling notes issuing thence echoed from one end to the other of the spacious Piazza. The burden of the ditty was,--
"Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,
T'amo d'immenso amor."
The old Countess, with a laugh and the easy grace of a great lady, tossed the singers a coin half-way across the Piazza. Erika frowned. A feverish indignation possessed her. Good heavens! did the whole world circle about one and the same thing? Must she hear it even from the lips of these wretched cripples? She bit her lip: from the distance came the drawling wail,--
"T'amo d'immenso amor."