"What do you think of her, Signor Leandro? Did I say too much?" asked the happy impresario, moving off to a console, against which the poet was leaning in an abstracted attitude, while his eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, managed nevertheless to look out for the manifestation on the Diva's face of that impression which he doubted not his figure and pose must make on her. "What a bore she must find it having to talk to all those empty-brained fellows that have got round her there, just like buzzing blue-bottle flies round sugar-barrel! I wonder it does not occur to the Marchese that it would be more to the purpose to present to her some of the brighter intelligences of the city. She must think Ravenna is a city of blockheads! And one can see, with half an eye, that is the sort of woman who can appreciate intellect!" "It will be for you, Signor Conte, to prove to her that our city is not deficient in that respect. Sapristi? Would you desire a better subject? What do you say to an ode, now, on the rising of a new constellation on the shores of the Adriatic? Hein! Or an inpromptu on seeing the divine Lalli enter Ravenna through the same arch under which the Empress Theodora must have passed?" "I had already thought of that," snapped the poet, sharply. "Of course you had," said the obsequious little man. "An impromptu, by all means! You could have it ready to present to her at the theatre to-morrow." "Unless the Marchese thinks fit to present me to the lady presently, I shall decline to write anything at all," rejoined Signor Leandro, thus unjustly determining, in his ill-humour, to punish all Ravenna for the fault of one single individual.