The heat of the day and the circumstance that we had dined, when played upon by the poet's booming and somewhat monotonous voice, had a lulling effect from which I was in danger of falling asleep.

But anon, as the narrative warmed and quickened, the danger was well overpast.

I was very wide-awake, my pulses throbbing, my imagination all on fire.

I sat up and listened with an enthralled attention, unconscious of everything and everybody, unconscious even of the very voice of the reader, intent only upon the amazing, tragic matter that he read.
For it happened that this was the Fourth Book of the Aeneid, and the most lamentable, heartrending story of Dido's love for Aeneas, of his desertion of her, of her grief and death upon the funeral pyre.
It held me spellbound.

It was more real then anything that I had ever read or heard; and the fate of Dido moved me as if I had known and loved her; so that long ere Messer Caro came to an end I was weeping freely in a most exquisite misery.
Thereafter I was as one who has tasted strong wine and finds his thirst fired by it.