and young lighting their candles, on their knees before the altars, walking in black clusters with their old servants, through the streets.
Invitations poured in now for him to sing at private suppers and concerts. He ventured out once to the house of the old Marchesa he’d met his first night at the Contessa Lamberti’s house.
But as time passed, he sent only regrets no matter when he was asked.
Guido was furious naturally.
“You must be heard!” he insisted. “You must be seen and heard in the great houses. Tonio, the foreign visitors must see you, don’t you understand?”
“Well, they can hear of me and come to see me here,” Tonio said, quickly blaming it upon the rigors of his schedule. “You expect too much of me!” he said with conviction. “And besides the Maestro’s always complaining about how the boys get into trouble when they go out, too much drinking…”
“Oh, stop it,” Guido said contemptuously.
But the conservatorio became the only place where Tonio would perform.
More and more he kept to it when he was not in the fencing salon, and he never accepted the invitations of the other young men there to join them in drinking or the hunt.
Again and again he was startled to see his blond-haired friend. She was in the Franciscan church when he went with the other boys for the regular performance. He saw her in the Teatro San Carlos, perched like a queen in the Contessa’s box. She faced the stage as English people did, and seemed forever engrossed in the music.
And she was at the school every time that he sang.
From time to time, he returned to the Contessa’s with one purpose, though he never admitted to himself what it was. He would go to the chapel and look at those delicate and darkly colored murals, the oval-faced Virgin and her angels with their stiff wings, the muscular saints. It was always late when he did so; he had always just a little too much wine. And sometimes seeing her afterwards in the ballroom, he would stare at her so boldly and so long that surely her family was bound to take offense.
They never did.
But it was his life at the conservatorio that more fully engrossed him, and nothing really disturbed his regimen, his day-to-day happiness, except the long letters of his cousin Catrina, who in spite of the fact that he seldom if ever answered her, grew more and more bold.
Always delivered to him by the same young Venetian from the embassy, the letters were clearly meant for Tonio’s eyes alone.
She, too, reported the birth of Marianna’s second baby, saying simply it was healthy as the first:
But your brother’s bastards far outnumber his legitimate heirs, or so I am told, as it seems not even his brilliant successes in the Senate and in the councils prevent him from an almost continuous delight in the fair sex.
Your mother he worships however, have no fear on her account.
Yet all marvel at his vigor, his robustness, his capacity for work and play from the crack of dawn to the chiming of midnight. And to those who express their admiration, he is quick to counter that exile and misfortune have both combined to make him savor the life he lives.
Of course at the mere mention of his brother, Tonio, he is at once driven to tears. Oh, how grateful he is to hear that you are doing so well in the south, and yet for all that gratitude, he is nevertheless concerned to hear so much about your singing and your prowess with the sword.
“The stage,” he says to me, “you don’t really think he would ever go on the stage?” And he confesses that he had fancied you somewhat of the temperament of your old teacher, Alessandro.
And I observe that you are more inclined to be another Caffarelli, and at that you should see the look on his face.
He would have everyone feel sorry for him! Can you imagine it! Don’t I know what it means to him to be reminded so often, he says, of all this disgrace?
“And the dueling!” he says to me. “What of all this dueling? I only want for him to be at peace.”
“Yes, and there is nothing so peaceful as the grave, is there?” I observe. Only to have him give way to great emotion again and leave my house in a flood of tears.
But he returns, soon enough, much fortified with wine, and pleasantly exhausted from the casinos. And bleary-eyed, he