A Siren | Page 6

at the ball on that last night of the Carnival, the
Conte Leandro was not in charity with all men, and, indeed, hardly
with any man. He was feeling very sore, and would fain have avenged
his pain by making any one else feel equally sore, if he had it in his
power to do so.
He was especially angry with Ludovico di Castelmare. Had he not
chaffed him unmercifully about the verses he had sent to La Bianca?
Was it not, to all appearance, due to him that the Diva had never

condescended to cast a glance on either him or his poetry? Had he not
called him Aesop, when it was plain to all the world that he represented
Apollo? And now this night, again, he had taken the opportunity of
turning him into ridicule in the presence of La Bianca; and he and she
had spoken of the possibility of their being troubled with his company
as of a nightmare. For the painful fact was that their uncomplimentary
expressions had been heard by the poet; who, when he had left
Ludovico and Bianca in the little supper-room together, had retreated
no further than just to the other side of a curtain, which hung, Italian
fashion, by the side of the open door. Finding that there was nobody
there--for the little buffet was at the end of the entire suite of rooms,
and all those who were not either in the ball-room, or in the card-room,
were at that moment in the principal supper-room--it had seemed well
to the Conte Leandro, in his dudgeon and spite against all the world, to
ensconce himself quietly behind the curtain, and hear what use
Ludovico and Bianca would make of their tete-a-tete.
The first advantage he obtained was to hear himself spoken of as a
nightmare; and that naturally: prompted him to prick up his ears to hear
more. But when he had thus learned the whole secret of the projected
expedition, it struck him, as well worth considering, whether there
might not be found in this the means of making his tormentor pay him
for some of the annoyances he had suffered at his hands.
So! the Marchese Ludovico, who ought to be paying his addresses to
the Contessa Violante in the sight of all Ravenna--the Contessa
Violante Marliani was great niece of the Cardinal Legate, between
whom and the Marchese Ludovico their respective families had
projected an alliance--was, instead of that, going off on a partie fine
with the notorious Bianca Lalli! A tete-a-tete in the Pineta! Mighty fine,
indeed! So sure, too, that nobody in the world would find them out on
Ash Wednesday morning! And he is to be at her door at six o'clock in
the morning! Very good! Capitally well arranged-- were it not that
Leandro Lombardoni may perhaps think fit to put a spoke in the wheel.
A little further consideration of the manner in which such spoke might
be most effectually supplied, decided the angry and malicious

poet--(poets, like women, will become malicious when scorned)--to
seek out the Marchese Lamberto, whom he thought he should probably
find in the card-room. For though the Marchese was no great card-
player, and never touched a card in his own house, he was wont, at the
Circolo, on such occasions as the present, to cast in his lot with those
who so consoled themselves for the years that made the ball-room no
longer their proper territory.
But the Conte Leandro did not find the Marchese among the card-
players.
The events of the evening had already thrown him back again into a
very miserable state of mind, from which the Marchese had been
suffering such torments as the jealous only know, during all the latter
half of the Carnival. It was strange that such a man as the Marchese
Lamberto--it would have seemed passing strange to any of those his
fellow-citizens who had known him, thoroughly as they supposed, all
his life; very strange that such a man, so calm, so judicious, so little
liable to the gusts of passion of any sort; a man, the even tenor of
whose well-regulated life had ever been such as to expose him rather to
the charge of almost apathetic placidity of temper, should thus
suddenly, in the full meridian time of his mature years, become subject
to such violent oscillations of passion; to such buffetings by storms,
blowing now from one and now from the opposite quarter of the sky.
But no length of prosperous navigation in the quiet waters of a
land-locked harbour will give evidence of the vessel's fitness to
encounter the storms and the waves of the open sea. The storm-wind of
a strong passion had, all at once for the first time, blown in upon the