barcarole that set the house in rocking motion. There was such
melancholy in her heart that she cast herself into all the flippancy with
abandonment. The Act was weak in too distinctly revealing the finger of
the poetic political squib at a point here and there. The temptation to
do it of an Agostino, who had no other outlet, had been irresistible, and
he sat moaning over his artistic depravity, now that it stared him in the
face. Applause scarcely consoled him, and it was with humiliation of
mind that he acknowledged his debt to the music and the singers, and how
little they owed to him.

Now Camillo is pleased to receive the ardent passion of his wife, and the
masking suits his taste, but it is the vice of his character that he
cannot act to any degree subordinately in concert; he insists upon
positive headship!--(allusion to an Italian weakness for sovereignties;
it passed unobserved, and chuckled bitterly over his excess of subtlety).
Camillo cannot leave the scheming to her. He pursues Michiella to subdue
her with blandishments. Reproaches cease upon her part. There is a duo
between them. They exchange the silver keys, which express absolute
intimacy, and give mutual freedom of access. Camillo can now secrete his
followers in the castle; Michiella can enter Camilla's blue-room, and
ravage her caskets for treasonable correspondence. Artfully she bids him
reflect on what she is forfeiting for him; and so helps him to put aside
the thought of that which he also may be imperilling.

Irma's shrill crescendos and octave-leaps, assisted by her peculiar
attitudes of strangulation, came out well in this scene. The murmurs
concerning the sour privileges to be granted by a Lazzeruola were
inaudible. But there has been a witness to the stipulation. The ever-
shifting baritono, from behind a pillar, has joined in with an aside
phrase here and there. Leonardo discovers that his fealty to Camilla is