"Angels never have a name, they are only known as angels, and need no
further designation. As there is an Angel Gabriel, so there is an Angel
Natalie!"
"Mocker," said she, laughing, "there are no feminine angels! But now
come, be seated. Here is my guitar, and I will sing you a song for which
Carlo yesterday brought me the melody."
"And the words?" asked Paulo.
"Well, as to the words, they must come in the singing--to-day one set of
words, to-morrow another. Who can know what glows in your heart at any
given hour, and what you may feel in the next, and which will escape you
in words unknown to yourself, and which unconsciously and involuntarily
stream from your lips."
"You are my charming poetess, my Sappho!" exclaimed Paulo, kissing her
hand.
"Ah, would that you spoke true!" said she, with sparkling eyes and a
deeper flush upon her cheeks. "Let me be a poetess like Sappho, and I
would, like her, joyfully leap from the rocks into the sea. Oh, there
are yet poetesses--Carlo has told me of them. All Rome now worships the
great improvisatrice, Corilla. I should like to know her, Paulo, only to
adore her, only to see her in her splendor and her beauty!"
"If you wish it, you shall see her," said Paulo.
"Ah, I shall see her then!" shouted Natalie, and, as if to give
expression to her inward joy, she touched the strings of her guitar, and
in clear tones resounded a jubilant melody. Then she began to sing,
at first in single isolated words and exclamations, which constantly
swelled into more powerful, animated and blissful tones, and finally
flowed into a regular dithyramb. It was a song of jubilee, a sigh of
innocence and happiness; she sang of God and the stars, of happy love,
and of reuniting; of blossom, fragrance, and fanning zephyrs; and in
unconscious, foreboding pain, she sang of the sorrows of love, and the
pangs of renunciation.
All Nature seemed listening to her charming song; no leaflet stirred,
in low murmurs splashed the waves of the fountain by which she sat, and
occasionally a nightingale wailed in unison with her hymn of rejoicing.
The sun had descended to a point nearer the horizon, and bordered it
with moving purple clouds. Natalie, suddenly interrupting her song,
pointed with her rosy fingers to the heavens.
"How beautiful it is, Paulo!" said she.
He, however, saw nothing but her face, illuminated by the evening glow.
"How beautiful art thou!" he whispered low, pressing her head to his
bosom.
Then both were silent, looking, lost in sweetest dreams, upon the
surrounding landscape, which, as if in a silence of adoration, seemed
to listen for the parting salutation of the god of day. A nightingale
suddenly came and perched upon the myrtle-bush under which Natalie and
her friend were reposing. Soon she began to sing, now in complaining,
now in exulting tones, now tenderly soft, now in joyful trumpet-blasts;
and the night-wind that now arose rustled in organ-tones among the
cypress and olive trees.