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That evening when the fiery sun was sinking in its crimson glory, bathing the glassy sea with its blood-red light and causing the islands of Gorgona and Capraja to loom forth a deep purple against the distant horizon, I took a cab along the old sea-road to the port where, within the inner harbor, I found the Lola, one of the most magnificent private vessels I had ever seen.
Capraja alone had understood the case put by the French physician. While the wine of Cyprus was loosening every tongue, and each one was prancing on his favorite hobby, the doctor, in a gondola, was waiting for the Duchess, having sent her a note written by Vendramin.
Nicholas immediately behind the statue of Napoleon a not too lively place of entertainment, with a billiard-room, a reading-room, and half a dozen iron tables and chairs on the pavement in front of the house. Here the colonel seated himself, called for a liqueur, and sat watching a clear moon rise from the sea beyond the Islet of Capraja.
I owe it to Genovese that I escaped for a few minutes from this old husk minutes, short no doubt by the clock, but very long by the record of sensation. For a brief spring-time, scented with roses, I was young again and beloved!" "But you are mistaken, caro Capraja," said the Duke. "There is in music an effect yet more magical than that of the cadenza." "What is that?" asked Capraja.
"But you see, Cataneo," said Capraja, "you have exacted the last drop of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the string is pulled of a perfect unison." "And you, Capraja, who have squeezed ideas dry, are not you in the same predicament? Do you not live riding the hobby of a cadenza?"
"Where art thou, Rossini?" cried Cataneo. "If he could but hear the music created by his genius so magnificently performed," he went on. "Is not Clarina worthy of him?" he asked Capraja.
Genoa had now taken part with France: its government had long covertly assisted the French, and now willingly yielded to the first compulsory menace which required them to exclude the English from their ports. Capraja was seized in consequence; but this act of vigour was not followed up as it ought to have been.
The sea, with the islands of Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us; old battlemented watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and not a human dwelling was in sight.
Fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy; but Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth and her home is in heaven. Shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains, bear her from breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon her the last bolt of the Tower of Famine, and give the keys to the keeping of the wildest surge that washes Capraja and Gorgona.
"By all that is holy!" cried Capraja, "will you tell me what score you are reading at this moment murdering Rossini? Pray inform us what you are thinking about, what demon is struggling in your throat." "A demon!" cried Genovese, "say rather the god of music.
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