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My friend Monsieur Habert is going to present me to his cousin, Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, and I think I shall obtain the audience I so greatly desire." Monsignor Nani smiled with his usual amiable yet keen expression. "Yes, yes, I know." But, correcting himself as it were, he added: "I share your satisfaction, my dear son. Only, you must be prudent."
Moreover, a place at Rome was marked out for him, for he there had powerful connections. He was a nephew by marriage of Cardinal Sarno, whose sister had married another of his uncles, a Paris notary; and he was also cousin german of Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, a /Cameriere segreto/, and son of one of his aunts, who had married an Italian colonel.
However, he was a remarkable poltroon, and had such an intense fear of losing his influence that he never risked a request without having convinced himself by long meditation that no possible harm could come to him through it. "Well, do you know, the idea is not a bad one," Nani at last declared. "Yes, yes, Gamba can secure the audience for you, if he is willing.
Innes had declared it to be, so, to stop the performance on account of Evelyn's viola da gamba, and then to hear her play worse than he had ever heard her play before, was very disappointing. "What is the matter? Aren't you well? I never heard you play so badly." He hoped that she would play better in the next piece, and he besought her with a look before he signed to the players to begin.
As Odo approached, Gamba appeared from the shadow and took his horse; and the next moment he had pushed open the door, and stood in Fulvia's presence. She was seated at the farther end of the room, and as she rose to meet him it chanced that her head, enveloped in its black travelling-hood, was relieved for a moment against the tarnished background of the broken mirror.
Strings, hautboys, and bassoons formed the groundwork of the orchestra. If distinctive colouring or sonority were required, the composer used flutes, horns, harps, and trumpets, while to gain an effect of a special nature, he would call in the assistance of lutes and mandolins, or archaic instruments such as the viola da gamba, violetta marina, cornetto and theorbo.
She lived in a region of ideals, whence ugly facts were swept out by some process of mental housewifery which kept her world perpetually smiling and immaculate. Gamba at least fed his convictions on facts. If his outlook was narrow it was direct: no roseate medium of fancy was interposed between his vision and the truth. He stood listening thoughtfully while Odo poured forth his doubts.
"Do come, girls; can you come on Thursday night? I'll send you seats. It would be such a pleasure to me to sing to you, but not to-night; to-night I want to be like old times. I am going to play the viola da gamba." "But you used to sing Elizabethan songs in old times." "Yes, but father thinks I have lost my ear; I shall not sing to-night."
It would be really lucky if you could see him, perhaps even speak to him who can tell? At all events, it will rest you, for you must be tired out." Narcisse was known to all the attendants, and his relationship to Monsignor Gamba gave him the run of almost the entire Vatican, where he was fond of spending his leisure time.
Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, has Sir Toby enumerate among Sir Andrew Aguecheek's attractions skill on the viol-de-gamboys, Sir Toby's blunder for the viola da gamba, a fashionable bass viol held between the knees. A part was written for this instrument in Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and a number of celebrated performers on it are recorded in the eighteenth century. Two of these were ladies, Mrs.
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