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Updated: May 16, 2025
In fact, there is no harm in admitting that Signora Evelina has contemplated the possibility of a second marriage, and that if the would-be bridegroom is not in his first youth why, she is prepared to make the best of it. In this connection it is perhaps not uninstructive to note that Signor Odoardo is in comfortable circumstances, and is himself a widower. What a coincidence!
Signor Odoardo, leaning against the stove, watches his daughter with a smile. It appears that at last Doretta has discovered a way of beginning her letter, for she re-plunges the pen into the inkstand, lowers her hand to the sheet of paper, wrinkles her forehead and sticks out her tongue.
Signor Odoardo turns back to his study, and perceiving how cold it has grown, throws some wood on the fire, and, kneeling before the door of the stove, tries to blow the embers into a blaze. The flames leap up with a merry noise, sending bright flashes along the walls of the room. Outside, the flakes continue to descend at intervals. Perhaps, after all, it is not going to be a snowstorm.
For Salvator played and sang like a master, and Antonio had a lovely tenor voice, and was almost an Odoardo Ceccarelli.
Our play begins with a scene which at once recalls what was originally the opening scene of Wagner's 'Infanticide'. In both there is a blustering father, Lessing's Odoardo reduced to the bourgeois sphere, discoursing with his silly wife upon the dangers that threaten their daughter from keeping aristocratic company.
No, Signora Evelina can never restore what he has lost to Signor Odoardo. For the dead give no kisses, no caresses, and the living long to be caressed and kissed. Who talks of kisses? Here is one that has alit, all soft and warm, on Signor Odoardo's lips, rousing him with a start. Ah!...Is it you, Doretta? It is Doretta, who says nothing, but who is longing to make it up with her daddy.
In the opposite house all is dark, and Signora Evelina's profile is no longer outlined against the pane. The weather is still threatening, and now and then a snowflake falls. The servant closes the shutters and draws the curtains, so that no profane gaze may penetrate into the domestic sanctuary. "We had better dine in here," Signor Odoardo says. "The dining-room must be as cold as Greenland."
It is rather at Signora Evelina that I wonder; for, though Signer Odoardo is not an ill-looking man, he is close upon forty, while she is but twenty-four. So young, and already a widow poor Signora Evelina!
There is a sound of steps in the hall; Signor Odoardo pauses in the middle of the room. The door re-opens, and Doretta rushes up to her father, her cheeks flushed, her hood falling over her forehead, her warm coat buttoned up to her chin, her hands thrust into her muff. "It is snowing and the teacher has sent us home." She tosses off her hood and coat and goes up to the stove.
How completely the cloud has vanished that darkened her brow a few hours earlier! And how well she acquits herself of her household duties! Signor Odoardo, watching her with a sense of satisfaction, cannot resist exclaiming: "Bravo, Doretta!" Doretta is undeniably the very image of her mother. She too was just such an excellent housekeeper, a model of order, of neatness, of propriety.
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