A SIREN ***
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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 Mmonth 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
BOOR 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."
