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Updated: June 2, 2025
He blushed red and turned away, but he opened his mouth and made a sound. "Do-o-o-o!" He sang like the master, but much weaker. "Not so bad; now the next, Re-e-e!" Nino followed him. And so on, up the scale. After a few more notes, De Pretis ceased to smile, and cried, "Go on, go on!" after every note, authoritatively, and in quite a different manner from his first kindly encouragement.
I never knew anything about the business arrangements for the début, since De Pretis settled all that with Jacovacci, the impresario; but I know that there were many rehearsals, and that I was obliged to stand security to the theatrical tailor, together with De Pretis, in order that Nino might have his dress made.
Nino said he would wait for De Pretis, and immediately turned his whole attention to the foreign girl, hiding himself in the shadow and never taking his eyes from her. I never saw Nino look at a woman before as though she interested him in the least, or I would not have been surprised now to see him lost in admiration of the fair girl.
"The signore is the professor of Italian literature recommended to me by Signor De Pretis?" inquired the colonel in iron tones, as he scrutinised Nino. "Yes, Signor Conte," was the answer. "You are a singularly young man to be a professor." Nino trembled.
"Signor De Pretis," began the count, in tones as hard as chilled steel, "you are an honourable man." There was something interrogative in his voice. "I hope so," answered the maestro modestly; "like other Christians, I have a soul " "You will your soul take care of in your leisure moments," interrupted the count. "At present you have no leisure." "As you command, Signor Conte."
But before they left Rome for Vienna there was a little wedding, early in the morning, in our parish church, for I was there; and De Pretis, who was really responsible for the whole thing, got some of his best singers from St. Peter and St. John on the Lateran to come and sing a mass over the two.
His voice was tired with the long watching and the dust and cold and heat of the journey; but, as De Pretis said when he began, he has an iron throat, and the weariness only made the tones soft and tender and thrilling, that would perhaps have been too strong for my little room. Suddenly he stopped short in the middle of a note, and gazed open-mouthed at the door.
But Nino would never have any other, for De Pretis had a very good one; and Nino studies without anything just a common tuning-fork that he carries in his pocket. But the old piano was the beginning of his fame.
"Diavolo!" said Nino, running his fingers through his curly black hair, "it is indeed serious. Where are they going?" "How should I know?" asked De Pretis angrily. "I care much more about losing the lesson than about where they are going. I shall not follow them, I promise you. I cannot take the basilica of St. Peter about with me in my pocket, can I?"
Do not think that because De Pretis suddenly changed his mind, and even proposed to Nino a plan for making the acquaintance of the young countess, he is a man to veer about like a weather-cock, nor yet a bad man, willing to help a boy to do mischief. That is not at all like Ercole de Pretis.
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