If you will let me teach you, I will do it for nothing." "Me!" screamed Nino, "you teach _me_! Ah, if it were any use--if you only would!" "Any use ?" repeated De Pretis half aloud, as he bit his long black cigar half through in his excitement.

"Any use?
My dear boy, do you know that you have a very good voice?
A remarkable voice," he continued, carried away by his admiration, "such a voice as I have never heard.

You can be the first tenor of your age, if you please--in three years you will sing anything you like, and go to London and Paris, and be a great man.

Leave it to me." I protested that it was all nonsense, that Nino was meant for a scholar and not for the stage, and I was quite angry with De Pretis for putting such ideas into the boy's head.

But it was of no use.