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Updated: June 5, 2025
It was on the morning of Ash Wednesday, it will be remembered, that the lawyer had received from the Marchese the formal communication of his intention to marry the Signorina Bianca Lalli.
"You said she was a very good actress as well as a fine singer," returned Paolina; "and I think she is. This is a capital box for seeing all that goes on the opposite side of the theatre. And I can tell you who the Lalli was thinking of, and who she was singing at during her duet at the end of the act your uncle, the Marchese Lamberto; and he knew it very well, too."
Her carriage was an entirely open one, and she sate in it, with old Quinto Lalli by her side, literally, as one observer had said, half buried in flowers.
Quinto Lalli and Bianca were sitting together in the parlour of their apartments in the Strada di Porta Sisi, that same Monday morning just after the little pink note had been despatched to the Marchese. Bianca was having her breakfast a small quantity of black coffee in a drinking-glass, brought, together with a roll of dry bread, from the cafe.
Old Lalli was not partaking of her repast, having previously enjoyed a similar meal, with the addition of a modicum of some horrible alcoholic mixture, called "rhume," poured into the coffee at the cafe in the next street. "That will bring him fast enough," said the old man, alluding to the note which had been just despatched.
It was time that he should find some foundation for them, if they were ever to be built at all, which most of those who knew Signor Quinto Lalli deemed not a little improbable; for he was of the sort of men who never do make fortunes. He was fifty years old when he had met with the little girl in question, and had done nothing yet towards laying the foundations of any sort of fortune.
Reconciled, as he had recently professed himself to be after some one of the frequent misfortunes that happened to his intercourse with them with the fair sex, he had begun his Carnival by attempting to make his merit acceptable in the eyes of La Lalli; and had failed to obtain any recognition from her, even as a poet, to say nothing of his pretensions as a Don Juan.
"The fact is," said Signor Ercole, as he and Quinto Lalli turned away from the door, "that the Marchese has not been well of late. He very often does me the honour of conversing with me, I may say indeed of consulting me on subjects of art; and I grieve to say that I have of late observed a change in him. He is not like the same man." "Getting old, I suppose, like the rest of us," said Quinto.
It was much about the same time that Father Fabiano had set out on that walk to the forest, from which he had returned in such a state of agitation, that old Quinto Lalli, the prima donna's travelling companion, was made acquainted with the escapade of his adopted daughter. Though she bore his name, the fact was that the old man was in no way related to the famous singer.
"The Conte Leandro!" cried Paolina, laughing, "I am sure you ought to be uneasy at the bare thought of such a thing, for you know how terrible it would be to me. But is it quite the same thing, amico mio? La Lalli is indisputably a very beautiful woman; and the Conte Leandro is the Conte Leandro. But it is not that she is beautiful. I don't know what it is.
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