“I must hasten to her, I must protect her or die!” thought he, and, with a threatening glance at Corilla, he showed her the hour. Corilla read in the expression of his face that he was in earnest with his threat, and as if her inspiration lent wings to her words, she spoke on as in a storm of inward agitation, and with words of fire she decided that modern Rome was the happiest, as she had the holy father of Christendom, her pope, and his cardinals! The applause, the general delight, was now unbounded; cardinals were to be seen weeping with enthusiasm and joy; others with heartfelt emotion were showering words of blessing upon the improvisatrice, and all pressed toward the tribune in order to accompany her down the steps and in among the company. A sudden thought of rescue had like a flash of lightning arisen in Carlo’s soul. “Natalie must first be completely separated from this society, and then I will seek this man and render him incapable of mischief!” thought he. By main strength he made himself a path through the crowd surrounding Corilla, and now stood near Cardinal Bernis, at whose side still remained Natalie and Count Paulo. “You have struck the lyre like an Apollo,” exclaimed the cardinal to the singer. Carlo bowed with a smile, and hastily said: “And are you ignorant, your eminence, that a much greater poetess and improvisatrice than our Corilla is in your society?” The cardinal smilingly threatened him with his finger. “Poor Carlo, has it already come to this?” said he. “You are jealous of our delight in Corilla, and would lessen her fame, that you may make her more your own!” “I speak the truth,” said Carlo; “a poetess is among us whom the muses themselves have consecrated, an improvisatrice, not of human composition, but by the grace of God, to whom the angels whisper the rhymes, and the muses the ideas!” “And who, then, is this divinely-gifted artist, this consecrated daughter of the muses?” wonderingly asked the cardinal. Carlo indicated Natalie, and bowed to the ground before her. “Princess Tartaroff?” asked the cardinal, with astonishment. “That she is a princess, I know not,” said Carlo, “but I am quite certain she is a poetess!” What was it that at this moment stirred the soul of the young maiden? She now felt a pride, a blessed joy, and yet she had previously felt so sad at Corilla’s triumph! It seemed as if enthusiasm raised its wings in her, as if the word, the right word, pressed to her lips, as if she must utter in song her rejoicings and lamentings for her simultaneously felt pleasures and pains! A pure and genuine child of Nature, she felt herself the natural impulse to pour out in words, tones, and even in tears, what agitated her soul, and to which she was unable to give a name.