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If I could see you and tell you the story of Giacomo Piaveni, and some other things, I believe you would break your sword instantly. 'There is time. Come to Milan on the fifteenth. You will see me then. I appear at La Scala. Promise me, if you hear me, that you will do exactly what I make you feel it right to do. Ah, you will not, though thousands will!
Uncertainty was behind the curtain, as well as in front; but in front it was the uncertainty which is tipped with expectation, hushing the usual noisy chatter, and setting a daylight of eyes forward. Ammiani spied about the house, and caught sight of Laura Piaveni with Colonel Corte by her side. The Lenkensteins were in the Archduke's box.
Apart from the desperate perturbation of his soul, he thought of the Guidascarpi, whom he knew, and was allied to, and of the Lenkensteins, whom he knew likewise, or had known in the days when Giacomo Piaveni lived, and Bianca von Lenkenstein, Laura's sister, visited among the people of her country.
The larger estates of the Piaveni family, then in Giacomo's hands, were in a famous cheese-making district, producing a delicious cheese: 'white as lambkins! the count would ejaculate most dolefully; and in a rapture of admiration, 'You would say, a marble quarry when you cut into it. The theme was afflicting, for all the estates of Giacomo were for the time forfeit, and the pleasant agitation produced among his senses by the mention of the cheese reminded him at the same instant that he had to support a widow with two children.
The overture was coming to an end. By tightening his arms across his chest he gained some outward composure, and fixed his eyes upon the stage. While sitting with Laura Piaveni and Merthyr Powys, Ammiani saw the apparition of Captain Weisspriess in his mother's box. He forgot her injunction, and hurried to her side, leaving the doors open.
"Countess Alessandra shares mine," said Laura, rather tremulously. Countess Ammiani at the same time returned and took Vittoria's hand and pressed it with force. Carlo looked at them both. "I have to ask your excuses, gentlemen. My wife, my mother, and signora Piaveni, have served the cause we worship sufficiently to claim a right I am sorry to use such phrases; you understand my meaning.
After dark on the same day antecedent to the outbreak, Vittoria, with her faithful Beppo at her heels, left her mother to run and pass one comforting hour in the society of the Signora Laura Piaveni and her children.
She saw a very taking dark countenance making eyes at her, leaned her ear shyly, and pretending to understand all that was said by the rapid foreign tongue, acted from the suggestion of the sole thing which she did understand. Beppo had mentioned the name of the Signora Piaveni. 'This way, she indicated with her finger, supposing that of course he wanted to see the signora very urgently.
He recollected the sentence. He had once, during the heat of his grief for Giacomo Piaveni, cast it in her teeth. Violetta repeated it, as to herself, tonelessly; a method of making an old unkindness strike back on its author with effect. "Did we part good friends? I forget," she broke the silence. "We meet, and we will be the best of friends," said Ammiani.
Her report of Vittoria was, that she went to the house of the Signora, Laura Piaveni, widow of the latest heroic son of Milan, and to that of the maestro Rocco Ricci; to no other. It was also Luigi's report. "She's true enough," the woman said, evidently permitting herself to entertain an opinion; a sign that she required fresh schooling.
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