Even Lady Fitz-pompey said 'Brava!' As she proceeded the
audience grew quite frantic. It was agreed on all hands that miracles
had recommenced. Each air was sung only to call forth fresh exclamations
of 'Miracolo!' and encores were as unmerciful as an usurper.
Amid all this rapture the young Duke was not silent. His box was on the
stage; and ever and anon the syren shot a glance which seemed to tell
him that he was marked out amid this brilliant multitude. Each round of
applause, each roar of ravished senses, only added a more fearful action
to the wild purposes which began to flit about his Grace's mind. His
imagination was touched. His old passion to be distinguished returned
in full force. This creature was strange, mysterious, celebrated. Her
beauty, her accomplishments, were as singular and as rare as her destiny
and her fame. His reverie absolutely raged; it was only disturbed by her
repeated notice and his returned acknowledgments. He arose in a state
of mad excitation, once more the slave or the victim of his intoxicated
vanity. He hurried behind the scenes. He congratulated her on her
success, her genius, and her beauty; and, to be brief, within a week of
her arrival in our metropolis, the Bird of Paradise was fairly caged in
the Alhambra.
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