"The lady of the Lago Maggiore and Signora Bollini are not the same persons. The former appeared in a dream, which the intoxicated rapture of the south begets, the latter appears in the sober north, so well-known that the newspapers speak of her. Here, in this world of citizens, one dreams no more! That we are acquainted with the same secret only gives us the right of friendship, and in token of it I offer you my hand." She uttered it all deliberately, but yet in a cordial tone. "Indeed," replied Blanden, whom the Signora had completely won by these words, "it is folly to wish to bind ourselves to a past that is divided from us by the flood of time. With time we too have changed, and often that has become utterly strange to us which formerly had such irresistible dominion over us. I honour your sentiments, Signora! The claim upon love must always be conquered anew, at least grant me the hope that we may succeed." "I cannot but fear that without the magic of the south, the prize would not reward the trouble undertaken in earnest. What am I to you here, where my name can be read at every street corner?" "The magic of art, Signora, can everywhere produce an _Isola bella_ with its peep into enchanting distance." "The magic of art! Oh, how rude, everyday life sweeps it away! Attend an operatic rehearsal, listen to the confused cries of the manager, the conductor, the bars of music constantly broken off; the musical howls of the chorus; visit the theatrical wardrobe, and look at the tinsel out of which the artistic work of our beauty is created for an evening's performance; listen to the criticising comments of our colleagues behind the scenes; you will be in doubt where you should seek the magic of art." "Still it does exist, and before its power disappears the ponderous apparatus by which it must be called into life." "Certainly in the emotions of creative and sensitive minds it bears an enduring life. But when the magic forsakes us, who should be the representatives of art? Is there a greater pain than the sensation of one's own uselessness, and in addition, when it is unmerited, when it was formerly foreign to us? A singer whose voice becomes weaker, who from day to day becomes more conscious of its decay, is more fitted for elegiac reflections than a crumbling ruin, around which ivy climbs." "You speak, dear friend, of matters which it is to be hoped you do not know from personal experience?" "Yet I do know them by experience. I tell it you in confidence; before the world I must seek to conceal it, my fame may be able to disguise for some time longer what is unavoidable--a good name has illimitable credit. But my enemies are already beginning to destroy it. A spiteful reporter in Riga made exaggerated allusions to the deterioration of my voice, and a local newspaper here, which bears the impress of Herr Spiegeler's intellect, hastened to print a copy of that criticism." Blanden shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.