To their wild transports of praise Roland listened patiently, in the hope that he might glean something of her story; but they knew nothing, except that she was reputed to be a Sicilian, of a noble family, whose passion for the stage had excited the darkest enmity of her relatives; insomuch that it was said she was tracked from city to city by hired assassins. She remained two days at Naples; she appeared but once at Rome; in Genoa, though announced, she never came to the theatre. Such were the extravagant tales, heightened by all the color of romantic adventure,--how, at one time, she had escaped from a royal palace by leaping into the sea,--how, at another, she had ridden through a squadron of the Swiss Guard, sabre in hand, and got clean away from Bologna, where a cardinal's letter had arrested her. Incidents the strangest, the least probable, were recounted of her,--the high proffers of marriage she had rejected; the alliances, even with royal blood, she had refused. There was nothing, where her name figured, that seemed impossible; hers was a destiny above all the rules that guide humbler mortals. Excellence, of whatever kind it be, has always this attraction,--that it forms a standard by which men measure with each other their capacities of enjoyment and their powers of appreciation. Roland's curiosity was stimulated, therefore, to behold with his own eyes the wonder which had excited these youthful heroics. He had long since ceased to be sanguine on any subject; and he felt that he could sustain disappointment on graver matters than this. When they reached Venice, they found that city in a state of enthusiastic excitement fully equal to their own. All the excesses into which admiration for art can carry a people insensible to other emotions than those which minister to the senses, had been committed to welcome “La Regina de la Balla.” Her _entrée_ had been like a triumph; garlands of flowers, bouquets, rich tapestries floating from balconies, gondolas with bands of music; the civic authorities even, in robes of state, met her as she entered; strangers flocked in crowds from the other cities of the north, and even from parts beyond the Alps. The hotels were crammed with visitors all eager to see one of whom every tongue was telling. A guard of honor stood before the palace in which she resided,--as much a measure of necessity to repel the pressure of the anxious crowd as it was a mark of distinction. The epidemic character of enthusiasm is well known. It is a fervor to which none can remain insensible. Cashel was soon to experience this. How could he preserve a cold indifference to the emotions which swayed thousands around him? How maintain his calm amid that host, which surged and fretted like the sea in a storm? La Ninetta was the one word repeated on every side; even to have seen her once was a distinction, and they who had already felt her fascinations were listened to as oracles.