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Even when she was quite a little child she used to try her hand at verse-making, and my father used to write me word that she was the best voceratrice in Pietranera, and for two leagues round about." Colomba cast an imploring glance at her brother. Miss Nevil had heard of the Corsican improvisatrici, and was dying to hear one. She begged Colomba, then, to give her a specimen of her powers.
I don't care for him! . . . No! no! and besides the thing is impossible . . . And Colomba . . . Fancy me sister-in-law to a voceratrice, who wears a big dagger!" And she noticed she was still holding King Theodore's dagger in her hand. She tossed it on to her toilette table.
The enmity which sometimes alarmed me for you must therefore end at once. You have no idea what a pleasure this has been to me! When you started hence with the fair voceratrice, with your gun in hand, and your brow lowering, you struck me as being more Corsican than ever too Corsican indeed! Basta! I write you this long letter because I am dull. The prefect, alas! is going away.
"Confound these wakes, Colomba! I don't at all like my sister to perform in public in this way." "Orso," replied Colomba, "every country pays honour to its dead after its own fashion. The ballata has come down to us from our forefathers, and we must respect it as an ancient custom. Maddalena does not possess the 'gift, and old Fiordispina, the best voceratrice in the country, is ill.
The prefect began with some commonplace apology for the unseasonable hour of his visit, condoled with Mademoiselle Colomba, touched on the danger connected with strong emotions, blamed the custom of composing funeral dirges, which the very talent of the voceratrice rendered the more harrowing to her auditors, skilfully slipped in a mild reproof concerning the tendency of the improvisation just concluded, and then, changing his tone
"You are so pretty, Colomba, that I wonder you are not married already! Come, you must tell me about your suitors. And besides, I'm sure to hear their serenades. They must be good ones to please a great voceratrice like you." "Who would seek the hand of a poor orphan girl? . . . And then, the man for whom I would change my mourning-dress will have to make the women over there put on mourning!"
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