will enjoy an unknown pleasure in the friendship of his neighbours.
Repeating that her mother lives, and will some day kneel by her
daughter's grave--not mournfully, but in beatitude--she utters her adieu
to all.

At the moment of her doing so, Montini whispered in Vittoria's ear. She
looked up and beheld the downward curl of the curtain. There was
confusion at the wings: Croats were visible to the audience. Carlo
Ammiani and Luciano Romara jumped on the stage; a dozen of the noble
youths of Milan streamed across the boards to either wing, and caught the
curtain descending. The whole house had risen insurgent with cries of
'Vittoria.' The curtain-ropes were in the hands of the Croats, but Carlo,
Luciano, and their fellows held the curtain aloft at arm's length at each
side of her. She was seen, and she sang, and the house listened.

The Italians present, one and all, rose up reverently and murmured the
refrain. Many of the aristocracy would, doubtless, have preferred that
this public declaration of the plain enigma should not have rung forth to
carry them on the popular current; and some might have sympathized with
the insane grin which distorted the features of Antonio-Pericles, when he
beheld illusion wantonly destroyed, and the opera reduced to be a mere
vehicle for a fulmination of politics. But the general enthusiasm was
too tremendous to permit of individual protestations. To sit, when the
nation was standing, was to be a German. Nor, indeed, was there an
Italian in the house who would willingly have consented to see Vittoria
silenced, now that she had chosen to defy the Tedeschi from the boards of
La Scala. The fascination of her voice extended even over the German
division of the audience. They, with the Italians, said: 'Hear her!
hear her!' The curtain was agitated at the wings, but in the centre it
was kept above Vittoria's head by the uplifted arms of the twelve young