I can't make him out. There's
something wrong with him. He looks a dozen years older than he did;
and his habits are changed too."
"Do you think--that is--it has just come into my head--do you
remember, Ludovico, what I said to you last night at the theatre
about the way La Lalli sung her love verses at him?"
"La Lalli again. Why, she has fascinated you at all events. You can
think of nothing else. La Lalli and lo zio. Dio mio! If you only
knew him. All the prime donne in Europe might sing at him, or make
eyes at him, or make love to him, in any manner they liked from
morning till night without making any more impression on him than a
hundred years, more or less, on the tomb of the Emperor Theodoric
out there. No, anima mia, that's not it. No, il povero zio, I am
more inclined to think that he is breaking up. It does happen,
sometimes, that your men, who have never known a day's illness in
their lives, break down all of a sudden in that way. Everybody in
the city has been saying that he is changed and ill. But I must be
off, my darling. I only came to tell you that all was in readiness
for you at St. Apollinare. At least that was my excuse for coming.
But now I must go and see about all sorts of things for the
reception to-night. We shall have all the world at the Palazzo to-
night. And lo zio asked me to see to everything.
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