



Produced by Tapio Riikonen, tapri@kolumbus.fi








A SIREN

By Thomas Adolphus Trollope



    CONTENTS

    BOOK I
    Ash Wednesday Morning
    CHAPTER
    I     The Last Night of Carnival
    II    Apollo Vindex
    III   St. Apollinare in Classe
    IV    Father Fabiano
    V     "The Hours passed, and still she came not"
    VI    Gigia's Opinion
    VII   An Attorney-at-Law in the Papal States
    VIII  Lost in the Forest
    IX    "Passa la bella Donna e par che dorma"

    BOOK II
    Four Months Before That Ash Wednesday Morning
    CHAPTER
    I     How the Good News came to Ravenna
    II    The Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare
    III   The Impresario's Report
    IV    Paolina Foscarelli
    V     Rivalry
    VI    The Beginning of Trouble
    VII   The Teaching of a Great Love
    VIII  A Change in the Situation
    IX    Uncle and Nephew
    X     The Coutessa Violante
    XI    The Cardinal's Reception, and the Marchese's Ball
    XII   The Arrival of the "Diva"

    BOOK III
    "Sirenum Pocula"
    CHAPTER
    I     "Diva Potens"
    II    An Adopted Father and an Adopted Daughter
    III   "Armed at All Points"
    IV    Throwing the Line
    V     After-thoughts
    VI    At the Circolo
    VII   Extremes Meet
    VIII  The Diva shows her Cards
    IX    One Struggle more

    BOOK IV
    The Last Days of the Carnival

    CHAPTER
    I     In the Cardinal's Chapel
    II    The Corso
    III   "La Sonnambula"
    IV    The Marchese Lamberto's Correspondence
    V     Bianca at Home
    VI    Paolina at Home
    VII   Two Interviews
    VIII  A Carnival Reception
    IX    Paolina's Return to the City

    BOOK V
    Who Did The Deed?
    CHAPTER
    I     At the City Gate
    II    Suspicion
    III   Guilty or Not Guilty?
    IV    The Marchese hears the Ill News
    V     Doubts and Possibilities
    VI    At the Circolo again
    VII   A Prison Visit
    VIII  Signor Giovacchino Fortini at Home
    IX    The Post-Mortem Examination
    X     Public Opinion
    XI    In Father Fabiano's Cell
    XII   The Case against Paolina

    BOOK VI
    Poena Pede Claudo
    CHAPTER
    I     Signor Fortini receives the Signora Steno in his Studio
    II    Was it Paolina after all?
    III   Could it have been the Aged Friar?
    IV    What Ravenna thought of it
    V     "Miserrimus"
    VI    The Trial
    VII   The Friar's Testimony
    VIII  The Truth!
    IX    Conclusion




A SIREN

By Thomas Adolphus Trollope




BOOK I

Ash Wednesday Morning




CHAPTER I

The Last Night of Carnival


It was Carnival time in the ancient and once imperial, but now
provincial and remote, city of Ravenna. It was Carnival time, and the
very acme and high-tide of that season of mirth and revel. For the
theory of Carnival observance is, that the life of it, unlike that of
most other things and beings, is intensified with a constantly crescendo
movement up to the last minutes of its existence. And there now remained
but an hour before midnight on the Tuesday preceding the first day of
Lent, Ash Wednesday--Dies Cinerum!--that sad and sober morrow which has
brought with it "sermons and soda-water" to so many generations of
revellers.

Of course Carnival, according to the Calendar and Time's hour-glass, is
over at twelve o'clock on the night of Shrove Tuesday. Generally,
however, in the pleasure-loving cities of Italy, a few hours' law are
allowed or winked at. The revellers are not supposed to become aware
that it is past midnight till about three or four in the morning.

Very generally the wind-up of the season of fun and frolic consists of
what is called a "Veglione," or "great making a night of it," which
means a masked ball at the theatre. And the great central chandelier
does not begin to descend into the body of the house, to have its lights
flapped out by the handkerchiefs of the revellers amid a last frantic
rondo, till some four hours after midnight. But in provincial Ravenna, a
Pope's city under the rule of a Cardinal Legate, there is--or was in the
days when the Pope held sway there--no Veglione. Its place was supplied,
as far as "the society" of the city was concerned, by a ball at the
"Circolo dei Nobili."

It was not, therefore, till four o'clock in the morning, or perhaps even
a little later, that the lights would be extinguished on the night in
question at the "Circolo dei Nobili," and Carnival would, in truth, be
over, and the tired holiday-makers would go home to their beds.

A few hours more remained, and the revelry was at its height, and the
dancers danced as knowing that their minutes were numbered.

There had been a ball on the previous night at the Palazzo of the
Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare. But the scene at the Circolo was a much
more brilliant, animated, and varied one than that of the night before
at the Castelmare palace. The Marchese Lamberto was the wealthiest noble
in Ravenna, and--putting aside his friend the Cardinal Legate--was, in
many other respects