reviving. He determines to watch over her. Camillo now tosses a
perfumed handkerchief under his nose, and inhales the coxcombical incense
of the idea that he will do all without Camilla's aid, to surprise her;
thereby teaching her to know him to be somewhat a hero. She has played
her part so thoroughly that he can choose to fancy her a giddy person;
he remarks upon the frequent instances of girls who in their girlhood
were wild dreamers becoming after marriage wild wives. His followers
assemble, that he may take advantage of the exchanged key of silver.
He is moved to seek one embrace of Camilla before the conflict:--she is
beautiful! There was never such beauty as hers! He goes to her in the
fittest preparation for the pangs of jealousy. But he has not been
foremost in practising the uses of silver keys. Michiella, having first
arranged with her father to be before Camillo's doors at a certain hour
with men-at-arms, is in Camilla's private chamber, with her hand upon a
pregnant box of ebony wood, when she is startled by a noise, and slips
into concealment. Leonardo bursts through the casement window. Camilla
then appears. Leonardo stretches the tips of his fingers out to her; on
his knees confesses his guilt and warns her. Camillo comes in.
Thrusting herself before him, Michiella points to the stricken couple
'See! it is to show you this that I am here.' Behold occasion for a
grand quatuor!

While confessing his guilt to Camilla, Leonardo has excused it by an
emphatic delineation of Michiella's magic sway over him. (Leonardo, in
fact, is your small modern Italian Machiavelli, overmatched in cunning,
for the reason that he is always at a last moment the victim of his poor
bit of heart or honesty: he is devoid of the inspiration of great
patriotic aims.) If Michiella (Austrian intrigue) has any love, it is for
such a tool. She cannot afford to lose him. She pleads for him; and, as
Camilla is silent on his account, the cynical magnanimity of Camillo is