One day the signora asked me if I had any voice. I answered that I used to have, but that I had lost it. She wished me to try it before her. I objected, but she insisted upon it, and I had no choice but to yield. I was in dire distress, and convinced that it would be impossible for me to utter a sound, for it was fully a year since I had thought of such a thing. I was then seventeen years old. My voice had come back, but I had no suspicion of it. I put my head between my hands and tried to remember a passage from the _Jerusalem_. By a mere chance I hit upon the passage which describes Olinde's love for Sophronia, and ends with this line: _Brama assai, poco spera, nulla chiede_. Thereupon, summoning courage, and yelling with all my strength, as if I were in mid-ocean, I made the thunderstruck hangings resound with that plaintive, sonorous lament, to which we sing on the lagoons of the exploits of Roland and the loves of Herminie. I had no suspicion of the effect I should produce. Expecting to hear the hoarse squeak which my throat produced when I last made the experiment, I nearly fell over backward when the organ which I unknowingly concealed within me manifested its power. The pictures hanging on the wall trembled, the signora smiled, and the strings of the harp replied to that resounding voice with a long vibration. "_Santo Dio_!" cried Salomé, dropping her work and putting her hands over her ears, "the lion of St. Mark's would roar no louder!" The little Aldini, who was playing on the floor, was so terrified that she began to shriek and weep. I cannot say what the signora did. I only know that she and the child and Salomé and the harp and the cabinet all disappeared, and that I ran at full speed through the streets, having no idea what demon urged me on, until I reached _Quinta-Valle_. There I jumped into a boat and rowed to the great plain which is now called the Field of Mars, and is still the most deserted spot in the city. As soon as I was alone and free, I began to sing with all the strength of my lungs. Miraculous! I had a voice of more power and range than any of the _cupids_ I used to admire at Chioggia. Hitherto I had supposed that I had not power enough, and I really had too much. It overflowed--it overwhelmed me. I threw myself face downward in the long grass, and, yielding to a paroxysm of delirious joy, burst into tears. O the first tears of the artist! They only can be compared in sweetness, or in bitterness, with the first tears of the lover.