They were true Neapolitans quick to suspect, irresolute upon their suspicions.

He was soon aware that they were not to be feared more than are the general race of bunglers, whom the Gods sometimes strangely favour.

They perplexed him: for why were they after him?
and what had made them ask whether he had a brother?
He was followed, but not molested, on his way to La Scala.
Ammiani's heart was in full play as he looked at the curtain of the stage.

The Night of the Fifteenth had come.

For the first few moments his strong excitement fronting the curtain, amid a great host of hearts thumping and quivering up in the smaller measures like his own, together with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events, stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety, jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements; threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and no master hand on the spot to fuse and point the intense distracted forces.
The curtain, therefore, hung like any common opera-screen; big only with the fate of the new prima donna.