A Siren

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

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A SIREN

By Thomas Adolphus Trollope

CONTENTS

[BOOK I Ash Wednesday Morning]
CHAPTER
[I]	The Last Night of Carnival
[II]	Apollo Vindex
[III]	St. Apollinare in Classe
[IV]	Father Fabiano
[V]	"The Hours passed, and still she came not"
[VI]	Gigia's Opinion
[VII]	An Attorney-at-Law in the Papal States
[VIII]	Lost in the Forest
[IX]	"Passa la bella Donna e par che dorma"
[BOOK II Four Months Before That Ash Wednesday Morning]
CHAPTER
[I]	How the Good News came to Ravenna
[II]	The Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare
[III]	The Impresario's Report
[IV]	Paolina Foscarelli
[V]	Rivalry
[VI]	The Beginning of Trouble
[VII]	The Teaching of a Great Love
[VIII]	A Change in the Situation
[IX]	Uncle and Nephew
[X]	The Coutessa Violante
[XI]	The Cardinal's Reception, and the Marchese's Ball
[XII]	The Arrival of the "Diva"
[BOOK III "Sirenum Pocula"]
CHAPTER
[I]	"Diva Potens"
[II]	An Adopted Father and an Adopted Daughter
[III]	"Armed at All Points"
[IV]	Throwing the Line
[V]	After-thoughts
[VI]	At the Circolo
[VII]	Extremes Meet
[VIII]	The Diva shows her Cards
[IX]	One Struggle more
[BOOK IV The Last Days of the Carnival]
CHAPTER
[I]	In the Cardinal's Chapel
[II]	The Corso
[III]	"La Sonnambula"
[IV]	The Marchese Lamberto's Correspondence
[V]	Bianca at Home
[VI]	Paolina at Home
[VII]	Two Interviews
[VIII]	A Carnival Reception
[IX]	Paolina's Return to the City
[BOOK V Who Did The Deed?]
CHAPTER
[I]	At the City Gate
[II]	Suspicion
[III]	Guilty or Not Guilty?
[IV]	The Marchese hears the Ill News
[V]	Doubts and Possibilities
[VI]	At the Circolo again
[VII]	A Prison Visit
[VIII]	Signor Giovacchino Fortini at Home
[IX]	The Post-Mortem Examination
[X]	Public Opinion
[XI]	In Father Fabiano's Cell
[XII]	The Case against Paolina
[BOOK VI Poena Pede Claudo]
CHAPTER
[I]	Signor Fortini receives the Signora Steno in his Studio
[II]	Was it Paolina after all?
[III]	Could it have been the Aged Friar?
[IV]	What Ravenna thought of it
[V]	"Miserrimus"
[VI]	The Trial
[VII]	The Friar's Testimony
[VIII]	The Truth!
[IX]	Conclusion

BOOK I
Ash Wednesday Morning

CHAPTER I
The Last Night of Carnival

It was Carnival time in the ancient and once imperial, but now provincial and remote, city of Ravenna. It was Carnival time, and the very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo movement up to the last minutes of its existence. And there now remained but an hour before midnight on the Tuesday preceding the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday—Dies Cinerum!—that sad and sober morrow which has brought with it "sermons and soda-water" to so many generations of revellers.

Of course Carnival, according to the Calendar and Time's hour-glass, is over at twelve o'clock on the night of Shrove Tuesday. Generally, however, in the pleasure-loving cities of Italy, a few hours' law are allowed or winked at. The revellers are not supposed to become aware that it is past midnight till about three or four in the morning.

Very generally the wind-up of the season of fun and frolic consists of what is called a "Veglione," or "great making a night of it," which means a masked ball at the theatre. And the great central chandelier does not begin to descend into the body of the house, to have its lights flapped out by the handkerchiefs of the revellers amid a last frantic rondo, till some four hours after midnight. But in provincial Ravenna, a Pope's city under the rule of a Cardinal Legate, there is—or was in the days when the Pope held sway there—no Veglione. Its place was supplied, as far as "the society" of the city was concerned, by a ball at the "Circolo dei Nobili."