"Sometimes I sit about in the Tuileries,--I have made the acquaintance of an old governess, who chaperons me,--and sometimes I go to the Louvre, which I know as perfectly as ever a guide in Paris."
Is it by mere chance that just at this point of the conversation, which is carried on in an undertone, Fräulein Fuhrwesen turns and stares at the Prince and Stella?
Meanwhile, it is Natalie's turn to sing. Her song is the grand cavatina from 'I Puritani,' 'Qui la voce sua soave!'
Natalie is an odd little person, short, slender, undeveloped as to figure, with a face rather too sallow, but with regular delicate features and dazzling teeth. With a fanatical enthusiasm for art and a determination to go upon the stage she combines a fortune of some millions of roubles, and, what is in still more comical contrast with her proposed career, a strict unbending sense of propriety, far transcending the prudery of the most English of Englishwomen,--not that shy sense of propriety which is always on the defensive, but that which is quick to look down with aggressive contempt upon any infringement of the rules of decorum.
Too well bred to speak when a lady whom he knows, were she a hundred times his cousin, is singing, Zino listens with exemplary attention to the Bellini cavatina, not indeed without a merry twinkle of the eye now and then.
Natalie's voice is rather shrill, her Italian accent harsh; her rendering of the impassioned aria is strictly confined to following the musical directions, p.p., cresc., ritard., and so forth; even at the point where the inspiration of the love-stricken Elvira culminates in the words 'Vien' ti posa--vien' ti posa sul mio cor!' she never ceases to beat the time with her right hand.
After this brilliant outburst della Seggiola interrupts her. The Fuhrwesen lifts her hands from the keys, and Natalie looks inquiringly at the maestro, who takes a pinch of snuff and shakes his head.
"Très-bien, mon enfant," it is needless to say that this familiar address is very little to the taste of the haughty Russian,--"très-bien, mon enfant; you sing in excellent time, but you must try to infuse animation into your style. Fancy the situation,--half crazy with love and longing, you are calling out into the night, 'Ah, come--come to my heart!' You must sing that with--how shall I express it?--with more conviction, thus:"
The Fuhrwesen drums the accompaniment, and della Seggiola, stretching out his arms like angels' wings, throws back his head a little, and warbles, 'Qui la voce!'
Estimate as you please his method of instruction, all who still find delight in the old Italian traditions must admit his art in singing.