Oh heavens! the very letters seem to shake With cold, with pain perhaps, poor prisoner! Well, Tell me the words—or better—for I see There goes a musical score along with them, Repeat them to their music. COUNT. You can touch No chord in me that would not answer you In music. LADY GIOVANNA. That is musically said. [_COUNT takes guitar. LADY GIOVANNA sits listening with wreath in her hand, and quietly removes scroll and places it on table at the end of the song._ COUNT (_sings, playing guitar_). “Dead mountain flowers, dead mountain-meadow flowers, Dearer than when you made your mountain gay, Sweeter than any violet of to-day, Richer than all the wide world-wealth of May, To me, tho’ all your bloom has died away, You bloom again, dead mountain-meadow flowers.” _Enter ELISABETTA with cloth._ ELISABETTA. A word with you, my lord! COUNT (_singing_). “O mountain flowers!” ELISABETTA. A word, my lord! (_Louder_). COUNT (_sings_). “Dead flowers!” ELISABETTA. A word, my lord! (_Louder_). COUNT. I pray you pardon me again! [_LADY GIOVANNA, looking at wreath._ COUNT (_to ELISABETTA._) What is it? ELISABETTA. My lord, we have but one piece of earthenware to serve the salad in to my lady, and that cracked! COUNT. Why then, that flower’d bowl my ancestor Fetch’d from the farthest east—we never use it For fear of breakage—but this day has brought A great occasion. You can take it, nurse! ELISABETTA. I did take it, my lord, but what with my lady’s coming that had so flurried me, and what with the fear of breaking it, I did break it, my lord: it is broken! COUNT. My one thing left of value in the world! No matter! see your cloth be white as snow! ELISABETTA (_pointing thro’ window_). White? I warrant thee, my son, as the snow yonder on the very tip-top o’ the mountain. COUNT. And yet to speak white truth, my good old mother, I have seen it like the snow on the moraine. ELISABETTA. How can your lordship say so? There, my lord! [_Lays cloth._ O my dear son, be not unkind to me. And one word more. [_Going—returns._ COUNT (_touching guitar_). Good! let it be but one. ELISABETTA.