These thoughts engrossed me so completely for several days that, notwithstanding my profound respect for my mistress, I could not refrain from communicating my ideas to Mandola. "Don't make that mistake," he replied; "what has happened this time is just the opposite of what happened with Lanfranchi. The signora is sick of the prince and invents every day some new excuse to prevent his coming with her. What is the reason? That I cannot guess, for we see her all the time and know that she is alone, that she has no rendezvous with anyone. Perhaps she is turning religious altogether, and means to cut loose from society." That same evening I started to sing to the signora a hymn to the Virgin; but she interrupted me instantly, saying that she had no desire to sleep, and asked for the loves of Armide and Renaud. "He made a mistake," said Mandola, who had a certain shrewdness of his own, pretending to apologize for me. I changed my selection, and was listened to with attention. I soon discovered that by singing in the open air and while the gondola was in motion, I tired myself a good deal, and that my voice was suffering. I consulted a teacher of music who came to the palace to give lessons to little Alezia Aldini, then six years old. He told me that, if I continued to sing out-of-doors, I should ruin my voice before the end of the year. That threat frightened me so that I resolved to sing no more under those conditions. But on the next day the signora asked me, with such a melancholy air, with such a sweet glance and such pale cheeks, to sing the barcarole from _La Biondina_, that I had not the heart to deny her the only pleasure that she had seemed capable of enjoying for some time past. It was evident that she was growing thin and losing her bloom; she kept the prince more and more at a distance. She passed her life in the gondola, and even neglected the poor a little. She seemed to be giving way to a profound depression the cause of which we sought in vain.