'And if madame or her sister play, it will improve the piano to be played upon, and I shall be vastly gratified.' Cecilia thanked me with so much energy that I was assured that she was a devotee to music. 'Would she play?' I asked; and she consented. She was shy before me, but so eager to put her fingers on the keys that she conquered all diffidence and went at once to the piano. When she had played a Sonata of Haydn's, I turned in my enthusiastic way to her sister and said how I rejoiced to have been able to gratify genius. 'Genius is a very large word,' said Miss Grammont. Cecilia was playing something else, and had not heard me. 'Genius _is_ a large word, madame,' I replied. 'But is not that a large style? Is it not a noble style?' Cecilia, she allowed, played very finely. 'Finely, madame? 'I respectfully protested--'she should play among the seraphs. You shall allow me, madame. I am no mean musician. As a critic I am exact and exacting. Permit me, madame, that I bring my violin, and play once with Mademoiselle Cecilia.' She consented. I brought my violin and we played. Cecilia's musical memory is prodigious. Mine is also retentive and precise. But she had too much inventive genius for precision, unless the notes were before her, and sometimes I corrected her. Next, this delicious interlude over, I begged that the ladies would do me the honour to dine with me. 'You must not be extravagant in your good fortune, signor,' Miss Grammont said. 'Trust me, madame,' I answered. 'If the day has dawned, I will hasten no new night and make no artificial curtains.' Then I went down to paint, and at seven o'clock they joined me at dinner. The meal was sent in from the famous tavern hard by, and I think I may say we all enjoyed it. And then came music, and for an hour we were happy. CHAPTER III.--AT POSILIPO. Ay me, for one hour we were happy, and for many hours thereafter. But when your heart is glad, when you drink the wine of joy, there is Madame Circumstance keeping the score, and she brings in the bill at the end of the banquet, and you pay it in coin of sorrow. She is my old enemy, this Madame Circumstance, as I have told you. It is not always that I can defy her. Who is it that is always brave? Not I. But I shall be brave again in the morning, and the battle will begin again, and I shall win. Pah! I have won already. I have smoked my pipe, and the incense of victory curls about my head just now, at this moment. There is no friend like your pipe. None. Ten minutes ago I was despondent when; I sat down to write. I broke off and smoked, and I am my own man again. (Regard once more the beautiful English idiom, and the smiling soul which so soon after battle can take delight in verbal felicities.) Now I will go on with my story. It takes a long time to write. It will be twelve months to-morrow since I last looked at the pages of this narrative. I may not touch it again after to-day for a year. Who knows?