'
In the adjoining room, Don Manuel was silently playing cards with the
Marchese d'Ateleta. In the drawing-room the light of the lamps shone
softly red through a great Japanese shade. The sea-breeze, entering
through the pillars of the hall, shook the high Karamanieh curtains and
wafted the perfume of the garden on its wings. Beyond the pillars was a
vista of tall cypresses, massive and black as ebony against a diaphanous
sky throbbing with stars.
'As we are on the subject of old music,' said Donna Maria seating
herself at the piano, 'I will give you an air of Paisiello's out of
_Nina Pazza_, an exquisite thing.'
She accompanied herself as she sang. In the fervour of the song, the two
tones of her voice blended into one another like two precious metals
combining to make a single one--sonorous, warm, caressing, vibrating.
Paisiello's melody--simple, pure and spontaneous, full of delicious
languor and winged sadness, with a delicately light
accompaniment--issued from that plaintive mouth and rose with such a
flame of passion that the convalescent was moved to the depths of his
being, and felt the notes drop one by one through his veins, as if all
the blood in his body had stopped in its course to listen. A cold shiver
stirred the roots of his hair, shadows, thick and rapid, passed before
his eyes, he held his breath with excitement.
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