Chapter 1

Brown (soliloquy). --"This is pleasant! To be quite alone here (dab), surrounded by these magnificent works (dab, dab, dab), and everything so quiet too--nothing to disturb one." (Dab) after a pause. "I wonder what Jones and Robinson are doing (dab, splash)--lying at full length in a gondola, I dare say--smoking (dab), I think I could spend my life in this place" (dab, dab).

"It is difficult to say which is the greatest pleasure, (another dab,) copying these splendid pictures, or painting from nature, those beautiful blue skies and crumbling old picturesque palaces, outside."

(Sings) --"'How happy could I be with either.'" (Prolonged pause, and great play with brush) --"Oh! That sunset last evening! As we lay out in our gondola upon the perfectly calm waters, by the Armenian convent, and watched the sun slowly going down behind the distant towers and spires of the 'City of the sea'--one mass of gold spreading all over the west!" * * "Oh! Those clouds! (Another pause) Ah! That was happiness. One such hour is worth--let me see--how many years of one's life? * * and yet this is--"