So clear, so true, so rich it was, but wanting a ring to it, the little thrill that goes to the heart.

He sings very differently now.
Maestro Ercole De Pretis lives in the Via Paola, close to the Ponte Sant' Angelo, in a most decent little house--that is, of course, on a floor of a house, as we all do.

But De Pretis is well-to-do, and he has a marble door plate, engraved in black with his name, and two sitting-rooms.

They are not very large rooms, it is true, but in one of them he gives his lessons, and the grand piano fills it up entirely, so that you can only sit on the little black horsehair sofa at the end, and it is very hard to get past the piano on either side.
Ercole is as broad as he is long, and takes snuff when he is not smoking.

But it never hurts his voice.
It was Sunday, I remember, for he had to sing in St.Peter's in the afternoon; and it was so near, we walked over with him.