“All goes well, according to our latest advices; and the official demand for our daughter’s hand will certainly be presented to his Majesty your father within a month from this date. So far, so excellent; and the days when, in your own phrase, we lived like ‘ragamuffins,’ are buried even to their shadows. Let us have a mass said for their souls, poor things, for they possessed some virtues. ... We have here, lately arrived, the most popular chanteur since Farinelli. He comes, with a letter of recommendation to the Marquise de Ravilla from the archduke himself, and is to charm our daughter into love with a shadow whose approach she has dreaded a little. That suggestion is for your exclusive ear, ma mie. It emanates from one who is very cunning and very observant--the Gonzalès, no less; and is founded upon the presumed consciousness of somebody that he had belittled himself, his rank, and his moral stature, in somebody else’s eyes. You will recall that little incident of the carriage and the ford, as I passed it on to you in madam’s own words. Certainly, according to her, it had its effect upon an over-sensitive nature, predisposed, perhaps, to prejudice. Somebody had already been pictured to this frank nature, it seems, in the light of a philosopher and prig. She may not associate the two--the stranger of the ford, that is to say, and the philosopher--but she may come to, or may have her suspicions; and anyhow he may think that she does, and be anxious to eliminate at once a bad impression. So this Tiretta is despatched to play the part of Love’s advocate with offended beauty. I do not vouch for the truth of this, or endorse its policy; I repeat only for your private ear what the marquise of her shrewdness conjectures. She, for her part, is so sure of the truth of her surmise that she wants the man sent to Colorno, that there, amid romantic environments suggestive to the heart of contemplation, the points of his fond advocacy may be sympathetically pondered. She says that it would be flying in the face of love’s providence to frustrate somebody’s obvious purpose and design; that that impression referred to--whether it concerns itself with prig or roué, or, worse still, with both--is hardly one of happy augury for the future, and calls for exceptional treatment; that, in fine, if somebody has contrived this thing, somebody knows what he is about and has made himself responsible for his instrument. “In the meantime, our newly-arrived improvisatore exhibits his qualities to triumphant effect. He is a soldier and a fine man; but this gift comes to him apart from his training, God knows whence. He will sing and rhyme you an hour on end; and, observe, he is very flattering, though veiled, in allusions to a supreme lord and comrade who possesses his heart.” To these passages the sick duchess answered in due course, and with a characteristic warning, the whole gist of which may be conveyed in a single sentence: