"I told you last year that he never married."

"Oh yes, of course; that is what I was thinking of. One cannot remember everything at once and pedigrees are always confusing at first. Then it is for love of Bradamante's nephew by marriage, Ruggiero Persiano, that Ettorina has now gone mad?"

"Bravo. And Malagigi was Bradamante's cousin."

"How was that?"

"Amone had a brother Buovo, and Malagigi was the son of Buovo. Therefore Malagigi was the cousin of Rinaldo and of Bradamante. And that is all you need know about the pedigree for the present. Malagigi was Emperor of Magic. Other magicians only commanded a devil or two each, but Malagigi dominated all the hosts of the inferno, all the devils, harpies, serpents, gorgons, hydras, furies and also the monster Briareus."

"Just as the buffo dominates all the marionettes in the teatrino," I interpolated.

He bowed and proceeded: "Rinaldo's helmet used to belong to Mambrino."

"I have read about it in Don Quixote."

"Ah! but that was not a real helmet; that was only a barber's basin because Cervantes wanted to laugh at Don Quixote. Rinaldo slew Mambrino and took his helmet, but Mambrino was a giant and his helmet was too large for Rinaldo, so Malagigi took it down into the laboratory of the inferno and altered it to fit."

"And do the audience see all that done on the stage?"

"Most of it; and what they do not see they imagine. Fusberta, Rinaldo's sword, formerly belonged to another giant, Atlante. Malagigi always intended it for Rinaldo, but he was a wise magician and knew that people do not value things unless they pay for them, so he would not let him have it till he had earned it by killing Atlante."

"It's rather like what you told me last year about Orlando's dream and his going to the river-bank where Carlo Magno and that other giant, Almonte, were fighting, and his killing Almonte and his taking his sword and horse and armour."

"I did not say that Orlando had a dream; it was Carlo Magno who had the dream about a young man whom he did not know, and I told you that afterwards, when Orlando came and helped him to fight Almonte, Carlo Magno recognised him as the young man in his dream."

"Sorry, Buffo; my mistake. But it is rather like it, isn't it?"

"About his taking the giant's sword it is rather like it, but that is not a bad thing in the teatrino, the people must not be puzzled by too much variety."

Then he told me about Baiardo, Rinaldo's horse, who formerly belonged to Amadigi di Gaula, to whom he was given by Berliante, another magician, who found him in the desert. After the death of Amadigi, Berliante chose but seven devils, put them inside Baiardo and turned him loose in the forest, saying: "This horse can only be dominated by a man as strong as Amadigi." After this, several things happened, of which I only remember that Baiardo kicked all the sense out of Isolier, a Spanish cavalier who was trying to tame him with his sword, not knowing the right way to do it, and a nameless Englishman was involved in a duel. At last Rinaldo came and, after working hard at Baiardo for an hour, struck him a blow between the eyes with his mailed fist and thus tamed him. Then Rinaldo mounted him and boasted of his triumph, shouting in his humorous way: "Now Baiardo is carrying eight devils."

"And so you see Rinaldo getting Baiardo is not at all like Orlando getting his horse Vegliantino; besides, Baiardo is red, the colour of fire, and Vegliantino is white all over, without one black hair."

"Why do you call Orlando's horse Vegliantino? Last year he was Brigliadoro."

"One moment, if you please. Almonte called him Brigliadoro because he had a golden bridle; but when Orlando took him he called him Vegliantino because he was so wide-awake—only slept with one eye at a time—always kept the other open. You have good horses also in England. I read in the Giornale di Sicilia that your King Edward has a good horse who won the great race this year, but I do not remember his name. It was not a reasonable name."

"The name was Minoru. Do you think that a bad name for a good horse?"

"I think Vegliantino is better."

"Perhaps it is. Let us return to Malagigi. Are you not going to tell me why he is no longer giving the Christians the benefit of his services as magician?"

So he told me about Malagigi, who, it seems, had a quarrel with Carlo Magno, in the course of which Malagigi boasted:

"You are the Emperor of the World, but I am the Emperor of the Inferno."

Carlo Magno did not quite like this and responded by cursing Malagigi, saying that he would not go to heaven when he died. One would think that Malagigi must have had the substance of this remark addressed to him before by persons who had not troubled to wrap it up in the imperial language employed by Carlo Magno. If so, it had never made any impression on him, but now he began to think there might be something in it. He had been a good man on the whole and a Christian, nevertheless, as a sorcerer he had no doubt diabolised a little too freely. To be on the safe side, he determined to repent and, as these things do not get over the footlights unless they are done in the grand manner, he began by burning his magical books, all except one, and they were the books of Merlin, whose disciple he had been. He next dropped his name of Malagigi, because it had been given him by the devils in council, and called himself Onofrio. He still kept on terms with his confidential private devil, Nacalone, whom he now summoned and to whom he spoke these words:

"Convey me to some peaceful shore where I may repent of my sins and die of grief in a grotto."

When we came to this—I could not help it, I was full of small complaints that morning—I exclaimed:

"But, my dear Buffo, this makes consecutive fifths with his cousin Bradamante dying of grief in the grotto at Trapani."

He admitted that it would have been better if one of them had had the originality to die in bed as a Christian or an ordinary man does, or to be killed in mortal combat, but there it was, it was the will of heaven and could not be altered. It seemed rather an invitation to the shortener of the story, but the same people do not come to the theatre every night and those who had missed the death of Bradamante would be pleased to see Malagigi die.

The nearest peaceful shore with a suitable grotto known to Nacalone happened to be in Asia; he put his master on his back and flew off with him apologising for carrying him so far, but there was not really much trouble about it, because his wings were strong and the journey was accomplished in safety.

Malagigi sat repenting in his Asian grotto, like S. Gerolamo in the pictures. He found a stone with a hole in it into which he stuck a cross made of two pieces of wood tied together with dried grass, and to this cross he prayed. In the intervals of prayer and repentance he gathered the herb malva, dried it, powdered it, mixed it with water into paste, formed it into cakes, baked them in the sun and ate them. When his time came, he died, and gradually his corpse became a skeleton, but his spirit still dwelt within because it was so ordained. His dying did not surprise me—to be born is to enter upon the path which even magicians must tread and which leads to the inevitable door—nor was I alarmed about his spirit remaining inside his skeleton—it gave him a touch of originality after all and differentiated his death from that of Bradamante whose soul I had seen extracted by an angel; but I could not help being seriously uneasy about his burning all his books. Each book had a devil chained inside it, and when Malagigi opened a book its devil used to appear for instructions. As long as he was repenting, they might perhaps be trusted to behave themselves; but after his death, in spite of its being somewhat equivocal, I was afraid that all these devils, and Merlin had an extensive library, would escape and be free to do as they chose. The buffo assured me, however, that no harm would come of it, and as he knew what was ordained by the will of heaven I was ready to take his word; besides, there was still the one unburnt book and this was the home of Nacalone, who might be powerful enough to avert disasters. So Malagigi's body remained in the grotto, dead and yet not dead.

Then a time came when his son Argantino happened to be travelling in Asia with his second cousin Guido Santo. Accompanied by Costanzo, a Turk, whom Argantino had defeated and baptised, the two knights came to the dreadful enchanted grotto and entered it to see whether perhaps it might contain anything good to eat. Costanzo did not enter, they sent him off to collect a quantity of wood to make a fire because it was a chilly evening. When their eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, they discerned a tomb whereon was this inscription:

IN HOC LOCO PAX.

Guido knelt down to pray, saying: "I perceive here a sepulchre."

"Yes," replied Argantino kneeling by his side; "I wonder who in this peaceful grotto is sleeping his last long sleep."

Presently the tomb opened by a miracle and a voice disturbed their devotions:

"Malagigi parlera."

The two cousins trembled with horror as a skeleton rattled up from the sepulchre and spoke thus:

"I am the great magician Malagigi, and in obedience to the command of heaven my spirit has here waited for this day. To you, O my son Argantino! I confide the one book of magic which remains to me. To you, O Guido! I confide the horse Sfrenato."

Here he delivered the two compliments to the two paladins; but for the moment Sfrenato took the magical book and carried it in his mouth as a cat carries her kitten.

"And now, listen to me. Terrible times are in store for the Christians and it is God's ordinance that you two shall preserve the faith. Swear to me therefore, O Guido! that you will"—and so forth.

When he had concluded his address, his prophetic spirit was exhausted, as might perhaps have been anticipated, for the speech was of portentous length, and the skeleton clattered down again into the tomb, which closed by another miracle while a ball of fire ran along upon the ground across the stage and back again. Then Guido took his oath and spoke thus to Argantino:

"Let us now depart. And you Turks! all of you, tremble! for Guido shall be your destruction."

With this he vaulted upon Sfrenato, who curveted and whinnied with joy at recognising his master. And so the two paladins continued their journey; but before leaving the neighbourhood they naturally made arrangements with the local marble-mason to have the tomb closed in a proper and hygienic manner.

"And all this," said the buffo, "happened only last Friday, and why did you not come in time to see it? It was very emotional."



CHAPTER V ARGANTINO

As I had missed the emotional interview at the tomb the buffo generously arranged that there should be a private repetition of the scene specially for the young ladies and me; but it could not be that afternoon because it would take time to prepare and we had the appointment to go to his professor's house for his singing lesson, and that also would take time. Before singing one does a few exercises, the effect of which is to warm up the throat and awaken the voice, because the warmer the throat, the better the quality of the voice, and this had to be got through before anyone could be allowed to listen. At the proper moment I was taken to the professor's house and introduced into the studio where the buffo, who had taken off his collar to do the exercises, sang extracts from his repertorio, which includes Otello, Rigoletto, I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana.

After he had sung one of his pieces, I made him my compliments and congratulated his professor on the result of his teaching, whereupon they made their excuses—I had come on an unfortunate day, the voice was suffering from fatigue and the piano was out of tune. I had not observed the fatigue, but they were right about the piano and I agreed with the maestro, who said it was time to order a new one. Not only was it out of tune enough to curdle the milk, but they had endeavoured to distract attention from its defects by crowding its lid with rubbish till it resembled the parlour chimney-piece in a suburban villa or the altar in a second-rate church.

As some old harridan when bidden to the christening of her great-niece fumbles among such ornaments of her gioventu tempestosa as have been refused by the pawnbroker, and choosing the least suitable decks herself out therein, thinking thus to honour the festa—even so on this piano were accumulated artificial flowers, photographs in metal frames, a sprinkling of glass vases in wire cages that jangled, a couple of crockery pigs to bring good luck and a few statuettes and busts.

"Please, Buffo," I inquired, "who is that silver saint upon the piano?"

"It is not a saint," he replied, "it is only un musicista qualunque."

"It looks about the shape of Mozart," I said, wondering what he was doing in that galley.

"I do not remember his name," said the buffo, "it is written on him in front; it is not a reasonable name."

He brought me the bust and I, thinking that, to harmonise with the musical atmosphere of the studio, it should have been Leoncavallo or Mascagni, found that it was even more out of tune than the shameless piano it had been standing on. It was BETKOVEN, with every letter distinctly legible through the thick silver paint with which it was covered.

These foreign names are so puzzling. At an afternoon party in Palermo I once had a conversation with a gentleman who told me that Bellini was the king of opera-writers and the emperor of composers. To pass a few hours with people who consider Bellini to have written the last note in music is as restful and refreshing as to dream away an August afternoon in a peaceful backwater, forgetting that there is a river running to the sea. After Bellini, the gentleman mentioned Beethoven, who, it seems, studied in Italy, and that is why his music is so melodious. The more accessible writers on Beethoven know as little about this studying in Italy as they know about the Palermitan spelling of his name, but it must be right, because how otherwise could he have acquired his astonishing power of producing the true Italian melody? And there is another German musician who is even more melodious and more Italian in style than Beethoven and therefore a greater musician.

"Did he also study in Italy?" I asked. "And what was his name?"

"They all come here to study, and his name was Sciupe."

I divined that this German melodist could only be either the Viennese Schubert or the French Pole Chopin, but with my English pronunciation I failed to make the distinction. Then a young lady, who had been sitting near, proposed to clear the matter up by playing a piece composed by Sciupe, and if I would listen attentively I should understand why he is known as the German Bellini. By this time I had made up my mind that it must be Schubert and was expecting one of the songs transcribed by Liszt, but she played Chopin's Funeral March and told me that the composer had written besides a number of operas and conducted them at Berlin. I acquiesced in what appeared to be the will of heaven, saying:

"Oh! yes, of course. How stupid of me!"

The buffo has a fine voice and has got far beyond appearing to have learnt his songs diligently and to be delivering them correctly. I suspect, however, that he did not pass that way. He will soon have assimilated all that can be taught about singing, and for the rest he is naturally an actor, one of those few who are born with the strange power of appearing to experience inwardly what they express outwardly, a power that his life among the marionettes has strengthened and perfected. But as to predicting his future, which is what he wanted me to do, I suppose that only an expert, and perhaps not even an expert, can tell from hearing a singer in a small room how he will sound on the stage; and the voice is not everything, there is the appearance and the question of how his personality will affect the public, and the further question of how he will stand the life and amalgamate with his fellows. So, like a good Sicilian, I told him that there never was such a magnificent voice, that I had never heard anyone sing so well and that I was sure he would eclipse all previous tenors, which made everything quite satisfactory.

The next day we had our private performance, and it began with Guido Santo and Argantino at the dreadful enchanted grotto of the great magician Malagigi. I was glad to see Argantino; it was nearly as good as seeing Malagigi in his habit as he lived because, although the son only had one diabolical book, yet in his personal appearance he strikingly resembled the father, being indeed the same marionette and distinguished chiefly by his wings, which he inherited from his mother Sabina who was a witch. Argantino always wore his wings even when he used to wear armour, and on his shield he bore the portrait of a devil so that everyone should know at a glance the kind of man he was. After the angel tells him he is to do the magic for the Christians he appears clothed as a pilgrim with wings, and in this way, although it is the same marionette and both Malagigi and Argantino are magicians, confusion is avoided—at least the buffo said that was the intention.

There was another thing I should have been sorry to miss. I had hitherto supposed the dictionaries to be right in defining a miracle as an event contrary to the established course of nature, but the buffo took me behind the scenes to study the miracle by which the tomb opened. There were three or four strings so arranged that if anyone pulled them the tomb could not remain closed. The buffo pulled them and the tomb opened. Nothing less contrary to the ordinary course of nature could be imagined. It would be interesting to know whether other miracles would similarly falsify their definition if one could have a buffo to take one behind and disclose the secret of how they are performed.

The second scene was a Ballo Fantastico, which was given to take the taste of the tomb and the skeleton out of our mouths. It was done by a heavy Turk who danced cumbrously; presently his arms detached themselves and became transformed into devils who danced separately; then his legs followed their example; then his head descended from his trunk and, on reaching the stage, became transformed into a dancing wizard carrying a rod of magic and beating time to the music; then, while the body was dancing by itself, various devils came out of it followed by several serpents that floated among the devils; after which it developed a head, a neck, wings and a tail, so that it became transformed into a complete dragon, and the wizard mounted upon its back and rode about wizarding all the other creatures. Altogether the original Turk became transformed into sixteen different marionettes.

After this we had a funambolo or rope-dancer. The curtain rose disclosing his rope ready for him, he entered and, after bowing profusely, leapt up and sat first on the rope, then on a seat at the back. Here he played with his pole, holding it first with one hand then with the other, then balancing it on his head and doing tricks with it. Then he walked along the rope forwards and backwards and danced, doing his steps with great care and precision. After which he sat down to recover his breath. Then he rope-walked again, doing impossible things—that is, they would have been impossible if he had not been sustained by many invisible strings, which the buffo manipulated with wonderful skill. I liked the funambolo even better than the wizard, he was extraordinarily lifelike.

In the evening I became transformed into an ordinary member of the public and saw the devils make the subterranean road. The performance contained a great deal besides about Periglio, a Turkish paladin, who, having been accused by the son of the Emperor of China of helping the Christians, was condemned to be beheaded. The father of his accuser with the other three Emperors came to see him die; they stood at corners relentlessly smoothing their beards and curling their moustaches with their right fists and crying "A Morire!" Periglio in chains was led on, blindfolded. The solemn headsman followed, carrying his axe, and, as the boy left off turning the handle of the mechanical piano, the cornet blasted a broken-hearted minor ninth over the last chord of the funeral march and prolonged it till—well, after all it was a mistake; Periglio had not really helped the Christians; his brother proved that, on the contrary, he had done them as much damage as any Turk among the allied armies of 200,000 men. So he was pardoned, and one of his friends gaily kicked the executioner off the stage. The brothers embraced and then, with their hands on their breasts, bowed to the audience to acknowledge the applause; but they did not know they were brothers, they had not yet recognised each other; that was to be another emotional moment to come later on.

The kicking the executioner off the stage and the embracing and bowing of the brothers were so absurdly natural that I inquired about them, and it seemed that Gildo had thought of these effects and carried them out.

"But then," said the buffo, "Gildo is an artist. You should see him with Truffaldino."

"What is Truffaldino? Another cavaliere errante?"

"He is the paladin who is a buffo. You should see him toss his crown from one side of his head to the other and put both his hands on his heart when he makes love to Angelica. He only plays the fool a little the first night, and more and more as the drama proceeds, until he dies by being pulled to pieces by four horses. It is all done by Gildo, and the audience laugh every night that Truffaldino appears."

Then we were taken to Vienna, where Guido Santo and Argantino had arrived, but we only saw Argantino.

"Where is Guido?" I asked. "I want to see him."

"Yes, well, you won't see him this evening," replied the buffo. "He's only in the next room, but he's much too busy to come."

"What is he doing?"

"Baptising Christians—those who couldn't make up their minds before whether they would be converted or not."

"Very well, we won't interrupt him."

So I had to be content with Argantino, who came with his book, his rod of magic and his wings. After flying about for some time in a hall with columns, he settled down, and someone entered and told him the disquieting news about Pope Gregorio III being shut up in Paris. But, knowing that it was the will of heaven that the inhabitants should not perish, he summoned his confidential family devil Nacalone by opening the book, just as a rich man of to-day liberates infernal power by opening his cheque-book. Nacalone was as comic as the mask Pasquino, and tumbled to show his willingness to obey. He had a string to his back so that he could be turned upside down and made to stand on his head. He received his instructions and flew off to execute them.

The Viennese columns disappeared and the devils, plenty of them, all with wings and tails and horns, were shown, as in a vision, working at the subterranean road. Two were sawing a block of stone; some flew up to use their hammers and do work in the upper parts of the tunnel; one, who was perhaps nervous or perhaps more of an artist and wanted to look the part of a modern Palermitan workman, used his legs to climb a ladder to reach his work; others were digging up the ground and knocking down the walls; a devil wheeled an empty Sicilian cart, painted with paladins, rapidly across the stage and after a moment wheeled it back slowly because it was now heavily laden with tools and cement; another kept coming with a basket of stones on his shoulder and emptying them down in heaps. It was a busy scene and much applauded, especially the cart. The Viennese columns hid it from view.

The buffo was very proud of this scene, and no wonder.

"There is nothing like it in Dante. But then," he continued, "there would not be likely to be. What is Dante? As versification, as language, his poem is fine, splendid, supreme, above all other poetry books; but as sense, what is it? And then again, why should Dante go about to make me believe in devils? Me! the ruler of all the devils in the teatrino! As though I did not know more about devils than anyone. Dante is the Emperor of Words, but the buffo is the Emperor of Deeds. And then his obscurity! As a theme for discussion Dante is as obscure as religion. One says: 'It is so.' While another says: 'It is not so.' As men discuss a melon and one says: 'Inside it is red.' While another says: 'Inside it is white.' Who can bear testimony to the truth of Dante's words? We cannot cut his poem open and see his inner meaning. Whereas I have cut my inferno open for you. I have shown you what it is like inside, and you can bear testimony to the truth of the subterranean road."

The buffo told me that the Christians in Paris were not armed, but they all got safely away to Montalbano. During the siege, the Pope directed the defence, and the people, following his commands, threw their furniture over the walls with the intention of damaging the enemy; but the Turkish Emperors had made a study of the art of war and taught their men how to hold their shields over their heads, and thus they warded off the chairs and tables and were able to creep along under cover, approach the city, climb up the walls and descend into the piazza. The first who entered went round to open the gates and let the rest in. As soon as they had recovered from their surprise at finding that the inhabitants had all escaped, they began to commit sacrileges. Balestrazzo, Emperor of Turgovia, occupied the principal church of Paris as a stable for his horses. Rainello, a nephew of the traitor Gano di Magonza, wishing to do a bravery, went into a church and cried with a loud voice:

"Take down that crucifix; it is only wood; if it had been a god I should not have denied the faith. Take it away. There is only one God and Mahomet is his prophet."

With this he leapt on the altar, drew his sword, and was about to hew the crucifix into pieces when a thunderbolt struck him. As he was the first to lay hands upon the sacred images, so he was the first to be struck. But he recovered; he did not die of the thunderbolt; it was the will of heaven that he should live to be killed by Guido Santo.

It was a pity that I had to go to Calatafimi and could not stay for all this, but before I went I had the satisfaction of seeing Ettorina go mad. At first she was hardly more than slightly unhinged, yet she was mad enough to enter the enemy's camp by night. The sentinel had just been awakened by the corporal, but she paid no more attention to them than they to her. Nor did she shrink from making consecutive fifths, or downright octaves, with Costanzo as she crossed the stage, going away to fetch a quantity of wood to light a fire because it was a chilly evening; but, as the buffo pointed out, she had a sufficient dramatic reason to justify the licence. Presently, like the laden Sicilian cart, she staggered back with her faggots and disappeared. In a few moments we saw the fitful glare from the conflagration she had kindled dancing on the combustible pavilion which took up all the back of the scene. Various Turkish soldiers entered to investigate the cause of the unwonted light, but they did not return to report, she killed them all, one after the other; and this gave time which the buffo utilised by applying a match from below, and, while the pavilion blazed and the audience applauded, Ettorina in her burnished armour went as mad as Tilburina in her white satin till the curtain fell.



CHAPTER VI THE ESCAPE FROM PARIS

Although I had to miss a great deal that it would have been interesting to see on the stage, I spent a couple of mornings with the buffo in his workshop helping to make the scene of the people escaping, which was perhaps even better than being among the audience later. I think he is most happy when he is holding up the mirror to nature and reproducing modern Palermitan life as it appears to him. He enjoyed the devils and the subterranean road, but the inhabitants of Paris in modern costume, each saving his most precious object and escaping with the Pope through the subterranean road to Montalbano, was a larger canvas and gave him more opportunities. As a creative artist he is in the fortunate position of being up to a certain point his own impresario, stage-manager and performer. Nevertheless he has to rely on the co-operation of his father and Gildo, and there is always the public to be considered, therefore it is possible that some of the things we made and contemplated in the workshop did not get so far as to be presented on the stage.

There was a sluggard carrying a mattress under each arm; and a drunkard carrying a bottle of wine, a real glass bottle that would catch the light and make an effect. Another man had on his back a table and was carrying a plate, a knife, fork, spoon and napkin; he was a glutton. The masks Pasquino and Onofrio were making a comic escape and talking in dialect; Pasquino was carrying his wife Rosina on his shoulder and a pillow in his hand, and Onofrio was saving an article of crockery made at Caltagirone. And because the buffo was studying to become a singer he had made a musician:

"But I cannot show his voice," he complained.

"He might be practising a solfeggio," I suggested, "which you could sing for him." But this was not treating the buffo's voice with proper respect. "Or put a piece of music-paper in his hand and make him a composer."

"Bravo! But what is written on the music-paper?"

I said: "Stornelli Montagnoli."

He began to hum meditatively:

[Picture: Music in the Play]

"No," he said, "that won't do. In the first place it is not yet known in Palermo, and when it is, it will be so popular that no one in particular will think of saving it."

"Very well then," I replied, "make it that he has just discovered an entirely new resolution of the dominant seventh and has written it down before he forgets it."

"All right. And this is the painter; he has his easel and a picture which he has only just begun; that is more precious to him than all the pictures he has finished because it is so full of hope."

"Bravo, Buffo. And where is the miser?"

"Oh Caspita!" he exclaimed. "How clever you are! Of course there must be a miser. We will make him at once."

So we selected an old man marionette who happened to have nothing particular to do at the moment, and got a piece of sacking out of which we made a bag and filled it—not with gold—

"No," said the buffo, "that must be one of the things the people do not see, they must imagine the gold." Then we loaded the miser with his bag and added him to the crowd of fugitives.

And he had made a woman saving a mouse-trap; she was a suffragette. That was because he had read in the Giornale di Sicilia that in England a meeting of suffragettes had been dispersed by letting mice in among them. The buffo's suffragette had argued thus:

"In all the world there are mice; Montalbano will be no exception. How do I know what sort of house I shall have there? It will probably be over-run with mice. If I take this trap with me, at least I shall be able to catch some of them."

It turned out that she had to sleep on the floor in someone else's house like a fugitive from Messina, and the mouse-trap came in very handy.

And he had made a chemist who was saving a medicine chest and a few instruments. The chemist had argued thus:

"In Montalbano there will be no order. Here in Paris the restaurants are well-managed and the food is good. How can I tell what sort of food they will give us there? Very likely we shall have to depend a great deal upon chance. I will take these instruments and medicine and earn money by curing those who will be sure to be upset by the badness of the food."

And a man came weeping; his father had died the day before and there had not been time to bury the body, but it had been put into a coffin and the undertaker's men were laughing because the son was rich and had promised to pay them extra for carrying the body to Montalbano and burying it there; but the son did not see they were laughing, he was in front to show them the way.

Two boys came along, each saving a marionette, one had Orlando, the other Rinaldo; they forgot that they were escaping and stopped to make the paladins fight; a third boy came and said they were his marionettes and the others had stolen them, and the boys left Orlando and Rinaldo lying on the stage and began to fight among themselves till their three mothers followed.

"Be quick, be quick, you silly boys, be quick," shouted the mothers, hustling everything before them—boys, marionettes and all—as an autumn hurricane sweeps away the fallen leaves.

"What is that man doing?" I inquired.

"Which man?"

"The one standing in the corner there—he seems to have a camera."

"Yes, that's right. He has been sent by the Cinematograph Company to reproduce the scene for their show."

"Oh! I see. That's a capital idea; the people will like that."

"Yes, won't they?"

And two men were dragging a heavy bundle along on the ground between them, and I asked:

"What's in the bundle?"

"Clothes," he replied.

And there was a woman carrying a hen in a basket, and the hen escaped from the basket, laid an egg in the middle of the stage and cackled back into Paris; but the woman saved the egg and said: "Better an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow."

Another woman was carrying her baby on one arm and leading a child by the hand, and the child was crying because it had to walk too fast and was tired.

"This is the astronomer," said the buffo.

"Is that his umbrella under his arm? It seems too long and too bright."

"No; that is Halley's comet which he has predicted for next spring. He does not want to leave it behind, the Turks might destroy it and he would lose his reputation."

There was the boy from the barber's shop opposite; he had been playing with a black kitten when the alarm came and he joined the fugitives just as he was, in his white tunic with the kitten in his arms and a comb stuck in his bushy hair. And there came a troop of old women, chattering and shuffling along and understanding no more about it all than I should have understood if I had not had my buffo, my programme raisonne, to explain it.

Then I said: "Buffo mio, we have had a musician and a painter, where is the poet?"

"Here he comes." And there came a pale, Alfred de Musset youth with long hair, a roll of paper and a quill pen. "Do you know what he is saying? He is saying: 'Better to embrace and be betrayed than to suffer and die in ignorance.'"

"Is that the philosophy of the buffo?" I inquired.

"It is the philosophy of the poet," he replied.

"Isn't it rather beyond the public? Will they understand?"

"The public won't hear that; it is only for you and me. There are many things we do not tell the public because they are the public; but we understand because we are artists."

"Very well. And then if we have a poet we must have a critic—won't this one do? he has a book; perhaps he is going to review it, or perhaps it is his encyclopaedia to save him from making mistakes."

"If you like, he shall be the critic; only then you ought to tell me what he is saying."

"He is saying: 'I despise everything because it is not something else.'"

"Bravo, bravo! That is better than what the poet said."

"O my dear Buffo, I am not going to admit that. Besides, it is not true of all critics."

"What I said is not true of all poets."

"Well, if we don't like what we have made them say, let us have someone to follow and show them where they are both wrong."

"All right. Let me see. That will be when they have had time to think it over. That will be the Cold Dawn of the following morning. We will now make the Aurora."

So we found a disengaged lady marionette and began to dress her in a piece of cobwebby grey muslin from which the last few spangles had not yet dropped. I said:

"I'm not at all sure that this is not going too far. Do you think we can really show the Cold Dawn of the following morning escaping out of Paris by the underground road?"

"She must go; she will be wanted at Montalbano to show some of the people that they have saved the wrong things."

"Very true. Yes. That is what people so often do when they travel, they leave behind them the things they want most and take a lot of other things that are useless. Now, that resolution of the dominant seventh was hardly worth saving—at least it was not really new."

"Where did you get it from?"

"I stole it out of the works of the musician whose bust was on your maestro's piano the other day, the one with the Dutch name who lived in Vienna."

"I hope you invented what the critic said?"

"Not exactly. Your poet reminded me of something in Walt Whitman and I twisted it round and gave it to the critic."

"What's Walt Whitman? Is he another Dutchman?"

"He was an American poet, but his mother had a Dutch name."

"Did he come to the teatrino?"

"He never came to Europe. I wish he had been to the teatrino. He would have liked your Escape from Paris, but perhaps he would not have cared so much for the paladins. He wrote something about them."

"What did he say?"

"If he had seen the end of the story, when the angel takes Guido Santo's soul out of his mouth, I believe he would have said that instead of flying up to heaven he flew across the Atlantic with it and installed it 'amid the kitchenware' to animate all the machinery and things in one of the Exhibitions held by the American Institute in New York."

"Is that what he said?"

"No. What he said was that all that world of romance was dead:

Passed to its charnel vault—laid on the shelf—coffin'd with crown and armour on, Blazon'd with Shakespeare's purple page, And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.

"Well, it is not true. But of course if he never came to the teatrino he could not know. Americans do come to the teatrino. I never know which are Americans and which are English; for the English come too. They come in the winter and the spring, and when they are pleased with some stage trick—"

"I suppose you mean with some miracle?"

"Of course," he replied; "it is the same thing. When they are pleased with some stage miracle, they clap their hands and applaud."

"That is nice and sympathetic of them."

"Yes, and they shout out loud and cry: 'Bravo, very good night.'"

"No, Buffo! Is that really what they say?"

"Yes, they shout: 'Bravo, very good night,' and it is a pleasure to hear them."

"I should think so. I must come in the winter next time and hear them say that."

"They all ask me some questions. I know what they mean, but I cannot speak to them, and, if you please, will you write down for me in English what I shall tell you, so that I can show them the paper?"

"Certainly, my dear Buffo, any little thing of that kind. If any of them come to see the Escape from Paris, I should think they will have a good many questions to ask. For instance, there is the Aurora"—He was finishing her off by putting a silver fillet round her hair and a shining star upon her forehead—"I cannot help it, but I still feel unhappy about her. She does not explain herself."

"That will not signify. We must leave room for the imagination to play—not too much, but it is a mistake to be too exact. There must be some mystery which the public can take in any way they choose. It is like the nuts on the bicycle, they must not be left loose, but they must not be screwed too tight."

I gave way, saying: "I suspect you are right. It flatters the spectators to feel that they are helping the performance by using their imagination. And if they don't understand—well, they can think they do and that flatters them again. And there is another reason why we must not tell the public everything—it would take too long."

"Ah yes! We must not bore the public or they will not come again to the teatrino, and then where would the money come from to pay for my singing lessons?"

So we let the Cold Dawn follow among the rest. There were half a dozen rollicking blue-jackets off the warship in the port, they had been spending the evening with their girls and were escaping with them. When I objected that Paris was a sea-port town only in a Bohemian sense, he replied that that was enough for him; and when I said that if the sailors really had a ship anywhere near, they would have done better to escape by sea, he complained that I was being fastidious.

There were soldiers arm-in-arm and singing, they had been interrupted while drinking in a wine-shop in a side street off the Via Macqueda and were saving the marsala which they had not finished.

After them came the maresciallo dei carabinieri in the uniform he wears for a festa, with a plume in his three-cornered hat. He was a broad, beefy fellow, taller than the soldiers, being made of a marionette who is usually a giant. He came swinging along, all so big and so burly, followed by a lady, showily dressed, who walked mincingly and was saving a pair of pink satin shoes and a powder-puff. She kept calling to him to stop, she wanted to speak to him. But he would not listen, he was not going to pay any attention to her—not in his gala uniform, it would not have been proper. Besides, there were people looking.

A blind musician with a broken nose and a falsetto voice was led by his mate who carried a 'cello. An interrupted wedding party followed, and school-children with their professors, sick people out of the hospital with doctors and nurses to help them, and a rabble of water-sellers, shoe-blacks, pedlars and men pushing carts.

Then followed the paladinessa Ettorina still mad, so mad that they were dragging her along and forcing her to escape while she struggled to get free and did not want to go, because a mad person does not understand danger. And paladins and warriors came—Amantebrava, Lungobello, Ottonetto and many more whose names I do not remember.

Last of all came Pope Gregorio III. He was not one to leave the city till the last of his flock had been saved. He wore his tiara and was in white robes with a red cross front and back; he carried his crosier in his left hand and on his right thumb was a diamond ring which sparkled as he blessed the people. So he passed with his Secretary of State, his cardinals, his bishops, his monsignori, his acolytes, his chamberlains, his Guardia Nobile and his Swiss Guard; some carried lighted candles, some carried banners and others crosses; some were swinging incense and others were intoning the psalm In Exitu Israel. The solemn pomp of the procession disappeared into the opening of the subterranean road and the sound of the singing could no longer be heard. They were all safely gone. The stage was empty. Yet the curtain did not fall.

Then came a poor mad boy, a sordo-muto, who had been overlooked. He was in a great hurry, making frightful inarticulate noises and running this way and that, being too much alarmed to go straight. Before he had found the mouth of the tunnel the curtain fell and we did not see what became of him. He may have been left behind after all.



CATANIA

CHAPTER VII THE BUFFO'S HOLIDAY

I do not remember who started the idea that the buffo should come to Catania with me; it grew up, as inevitable ideas do, without any of us being sure whether he suggested it, or Papa, or Gildo, or one of the sisters, or I, and it became the chief subject of conversation in the Greco family for days.

It would not be true to say that he had never been away from Palermo, because when he was a boy all the family went to try their fortune in Brazil and stayed there five years running a marionette theatre; when they returned to Palermo, they left behind them in South America the eldest son, Gaetano, who still keeps a teatrino there. But the buffo saw no more of South America than he has seen of Sicily and, except for this five years in Brazil and an occasional day in the country round Palermo, had never been outside his native town. But he knew that Catania was on the other side of the island and near the sea, and expected it to be hotter than Palermo because of the propinquity of Etna. He paid no attention to my assurances that the temperature would be about the same and said he should bring his great-coat, not on account of the heat, but because he hoped that if he was seen with it he might be taken for an English tourist.

We did not start from Palermo together. I had to go to Caltanissetta, which is on a line that branches off at S. Caterina Xirbi from the main line between Palermo and Catania. We arranged to meet at the junction three days after I left Palermo. I got there from Caltanissetta just before the train from Palermo arrived, and the buffo was looking out of the window. As soon as he saw me on the platform he got down and came to me saying:

"Oh! I am so glad to see you again; now everything will be all right. I have been wretched ever since you went away. I have not been able to eat by night or to sleep by day for thinking of you. And this has been going on for two whole months; but now I shall recover."

So we got into the train and pursued our journey.

"I see you have brought your great-coat," I said.

"Yes," he said, "if I am to be an English gentleman I shall have to wear it in Catania."

"But won't it do if you carry it over your arm?" I inquired.

"No," he said, "because then they would see my other coat, and that is so dilapidated they would suspect the truth."

"Your clothes are quite good enough for any English gentleman anywhere," I pointed out.

"They are not so good as yours," he replied; "the teatrino is dirty and they soon wear out. My great-coat appears to be fresh because I seldom put it on. I shall use it in Catania to conceal the shabbiness of my other clothes."

"You need not be so particular. My father when he travelled in Italy did not pay so much attention to his personal appearance."

"You have never told me about your father. Did he travel for some English firm? Was it tiles? or perhaps sewing-machines? They pay better, I believe."

"He did not travel for any firm. He was a barrister, an avvocato, and travelled for recreation during the Long Vacation. I can tell you how he used to dress, because just before I left London I copied part of a letter he wrote to my mother, and I have it in my pocket."

This is the extract from my father's letter which I read to the buffo; it is dated Hotel des Bergues, Geneva, 1 October, 1861:

Reading the Times of Friday this morning I saw a letter signed G.U. which I have no doubt is a mistake for J.U. and means John Unthank and which signifies he and his family are in Paris. It is a letter complaining of the shabby costume of Englishmen and is a foolish letter but it will have the effect of making me furnish myself with a new wideawake or something of that sort at Paris for my present wideawake has got another hole in it and is really very bad though I don't know why it should wear so fast as I take great care of it and am rather disappointed that it should fall to pieces. Mr. Unthank pointed out to me on the Lake of Como that my dressing-gown which I always wear travelling is out at elbows which indeed I find it is but that fact seemed to grieve Mr. Unthank less than the shabbiness of my hat and he offered to give me a new one that is a wideawake of his own which had been newly lined and not worn as he said since it was lined if I would throw my old wideawake away. I consented but I left Milan before he had an opportunity of performing his promise.

"It was kind of your father's friend to offer him his old hat; don't you think so?"

"Yes, very kind of him. But, you see, he had his reasons."

"Of course, he did not want to be seen with anyone so badly dressed."

"That is what he says in his letter to the Times. I copied that in the British Museum. He does not mention my father by name, he merely speaks of well-dressed Englishmen in Paris (by which he means people like himself) frequently seeing a respectable professional man disguised as an omnibus conductor or cab-driver and 'being compelled to stand talking with a vulgar-looking object because they have unfortunately recognised an old acquaintance and not had time to run across the road to avoid him.' My father, no doubt, thought of Mr. Unthank's conversations with him at Como and Milan and said to himself, 'That's me.' The cap fitted him and he put it on."

"Excuse me; your father cannot have put the cap on, he says he had to leave Milan too soon for that."

"O my dear Buffo, I am so sorry. When I said the cap, I did not mean the wideawake, I was only using an English idiom."

"I see, I understand. We also have a similar expression, but it is not about hats, it is about boots, I think, or coats. I will find out and tell you."

"My father does not say he 'had to leave'; he only says he left; and my mother, who agreed with his friends and thought his taste in dress deplorable, believed that he ran away to escape from Mr. Unthank's hat."

"Oh! but a hat is always worth something. I should have waited for the hat. Was it really a very bad one?"

"I do not remember it, I should think it must have been pretty bad. The dressing-gown was awful. It was maroon, and his friends called it his wife's mantle. After he left off wearing it, it was given to us children for dressing up. It was no use for anything else and it was not much use for that. So you see, Buffo, you need not trouble about your clothes if you want to appear English. You do not look in the least like a cab-driver."

"Perhaps not; but I think it will be safer for me not to be an Englishman. All this about your father's dressing-gown happened half a century ago, and the letter and the article in the Times must have done some good because the English gentlemen who come to the teatrino do not dress like that now. You are always beautifully dressed."

"Thank you very much, Buffo, but if that is more than merely one of your Sicilian compliments, it only shows that I inherit my ideas about dress from my mother rather than from my father."

"I think I had better be a Portuguese gentleman from Rio, a friend of yours, over on a visit, and you shall be a Sicilian."

"We will be a couple of cavalieri erranti like Guido Santo and Argantino on their travels. But I do not think it will quite do for me to be a Sicilian. I cannot talk dialect and I cannot gesticulate. And then, am I not too well dressed?"

"That will not matter; you shall be an aristocratic Sicilian, they are often quite well dressed. And as for the dialect and the gesticulation, it is now the fashion among the upper classes to speak Tuscan and not to gesticulate. It is considered more—I cannot remember the word, I saw it in the Giornale di Sicilia, it is an English word."

"Do you mean it is more chic?"

"It is not exactly that and chic is a French word. One moment, if you please. It is—we say lo snobismo."

"I see. Very well; I will play the Sicilian snob, but I never saw one so I shall have to do it extempore as Snug had to play the part of Lion."

"What is Snug? another American poet?

"He was a joiner and lived in Athens at the time when all the good things happened. But his father, the author of his being, as we say, was an English poet and cast him for the part of Lion in Pyramus and Thisbe."

"What is Thisbe? a wandering knight?"

"No. Thisbe was the lady loved by Pyramus and was acted by Flute the bellows-mender. It's all in that poet who said what I told you when we were making the Escape from Paris—you remember, about holding the mirror up to nature."

"I wish I could read your English poets. I like everything English. The Englishmen who come to the teatrino are always good and kind—tutti bravi—I wish I were an Englishman—a real one I mean, like you."

Here were more compliments, so I replied: "I wish I were a Sicilian buffo."

"Ah! but you could not be that," said he. "Now I could have my hair cut short, grow a beard on my chin, a pair of spectacles on my eyes and heels on my boots and then I should only have to be naturalised. But you could never be a buffo—not even an English one."

"No; I suppose not. You see, I'm too serious. Gildo says I take a gloomy view of life."

"Yes," he agreed, "why do you?"

"I don't know," I replied. "My poor mother—my adorata mamma, as you call her—used to make the same complaint. She thought I inherited my desponding temperament from my father."

"As you inherited your taste in dress from her."

"Just so. But I think I am like Orlando and your other paladins, and that I am as I am because it was the will of heaven."

"That is only another way of saying the same thing," observed the buffo; which rather surprised me because I did not know he took such a just view of the significance of evolution.

On arriving at Catania we went to the albergo and, instead of following the usual course and giving his Christian name and surname, Alessandro Greco, he preferred to specify his profession and describe himself as "Tenore Greco." They posted this up in the hall under my name, with the unexpected result that the other guests ignored him, thinking the words applied to me and that I was a tenor singer from Greece.

The first thing to be done was to go out and get something to eat, and as we went along the buffo expressed his delight with the appearance of Catania. He had no idea that such a town could exist outside Palermo or Brazil.

"It is beautiful," he exclaimed, "yes, and I shall always declare that it is beautiful. But, my dear Enrico, will you be kind enough to tell me why it is so black?"

"That, my dear Buffo," I replied, "is on account of the lava."

"But how do you mean—the lava? What is this lava that you speak of, and how does it darken the houses and the streets?"

To which I replied as follows: "The lava is that mass of fire which issues from Etna and then dissolves itself and becomes formed into black rock, and, as it is excessively hard, the people of Catania use it for building their houses and for paving their streets."

I do not remember expressing myself precisely in these words, but the buffo wrote me an account of his holiday and this is what he says I said. It seems that I continued thus:

"This house, for example, is built of lava, this pavement is lava, those columns are lava, that elephant over the fountain is sculptured in lava, this is lava, that is lava, everything is lava; even those—"

"Stop, stop," interrupted the buffo, "for pity's sake stop, or I shall begin to think that you and I also are made of lava."

We reached the Birraria Svizzera and sat down.

"Are you hungry, Buffo?"

"I am always hungry. My subterranean road is always ready."

"That's capital," I replied. "And what particular fugitive would you like to send down it now?"

"Seppia and interiori di pollo," he replied without hesitation.

Now the first of these is cuttle-fish and looks as though the cook in sending to table something that ought to have been thrown away had tried to conceal it by emptying a bottle of ink into the dish; the second is un-selected giblets. So I replied:

"Very well; but I don't think I'll join you. No one will believe I am a Sicilian unless I eat maccaroni, and perhaps I will have a veal cutlet afterwards; that will be more suited to my subterranean road."

"You had better have what I have," said he, "it is exquisite."

"Not to-day," I replied gently.

So we ate our dinner and discussed what we should do during the evening. He wanted to go to the marionette theatre, and I was not surprised, for I remembered that the vergers of Westminster Abbey and of Salisbury Cathedral spend their holidays making tours to visit other cathedrals; cooks go to Food Exhibitions; Scotch station-masters come to London and spend their time in the Underground railways; and English journalists when they meet on an outing, say to one another:

"It is a foggy morning; let us go in and split three or four infinitives."

So I took him to the Teatro Sicilia and introduced him to the proprietor, Gregorio Grasso, a half-brother of Giovanni Grasso, and we went behind the scenes to study the difference between the Catanian and the Palermitan systems. He was first struck by the immense size of the place as compared with his own little theatre; next by the orchestra which, instead of being a mechanical piano turned by a boy, consisted of a violin, a guitar and a double-bass played by men; and finally by the manner of manipulating the figures, which distressed him so seriously that he forgot he was a Portuguese gentleman and began to give Gregorio a lesson to show him how much better we do things in Palermo; but it came to nothing, because a method that produces a good effect when applied to a small and fairly light marionette will not do when applied to one that is nearly a metre and a half high and weighs about fifty kilogrammes; it is like trying to play an elaborate violin passage on the horn. Soon we were politely invited to go to the front, where we were shown into good places, and the performance began. In the auditorium there was the familiar, pleasant, faint crackling of melon seeds and peanuts which the people were munching as at home, and a man pushing his way about among them selling lemonade, and water with a dash of anise in it.

The buffo thought the marionettes of Catania were magnificent, well-modelled and sumptuously dressed; but their size and their weight make it impossible for them to move with the delicacy and naturalness which he and his father and brother know so well how to impart to those at home. They may start fairly well, but sooner or later the figure will betray to the public the fatigue of the operator who is standing exhausted on the platform behind, no longer capable of communicating any semblance of life to the limbs of the puppet. He did not, however, arrive at this conclusion all at once, for, in the course of the performance when I asked him how it was that the marionettes of Catania were not more expressive, he replied:

"I suppose it must be on account of the lava."

The figures appear against the back-cloth and the operator cannot reach forward to bring them nearer to the audience, thus the front part of the stage is free—or rather it would be free, but the public are permitted to stray on to it, and thus the stage presents a picture of marionettes with two or three live people sitting at each side.

"Buffo mio," I said, "does it appear to you to be a good plan that the public should go on the stage and mingle with the paladins? It is not allowed in our own theatre at home."

"I am not sure that it is a bad plan," he replied, "it is true we do not allow it in Palermo; but one moment, if you please, there is something coming into my head. Ah! yes, it is about holding up the mirror to nature. Now here, in Catania, this stage presents a truer mirror of nature than ours in Palermo. For have you not observed in life that, with the exception of a few really sensible people like you and me, most men are merely puppets in the hands of others? They do not act on their own ideas nor do they think for themselves; also they adopt any words that are put into their mouths. Now, it seems to me that the proportion of real men compared with marionettes is not greater on this stage than we observe it to be in life, and therefore we may say that the proprietor of this theatre is following the advice of your poet."

He noticed that one of the chief characteristics of the Catanian marionettes comes into evidence when they are fighting. Two of them take up their positions opposite each other, sidling round and round like fighting cocks preparing to set to; they raise their scimitars, cross them and rub them one against the other, like butchers sharpening their knives; after a certain time spent in this sword exercise, they cross the stage and, turning suddenly round, face one another and strike; the consequence of this manoeuvre is that they both fall to the ground. We were looking on at such a duel and when the climax came the buffo rose to his feet and clapped his hands expecting the rest of the public to join, but to his surprise they remained cold, and declined "to crown his applause with their acquiescence," as he expressed it. He turned wonderingly to the young man who was selling lemonade and said, speaking with difficulty in broken Tuscan, as a Portuguese gentleman from Rio might be expected to do:

"Tell me, Caro mio, why do not the public join me in applauding?"

"My dear Sir," replied the young man, "it is out of the question. You do not seem to be aware of the identity of the marionette who has just been killed. He is a Christian and the brother-in-law of Rinaldo. He is Ruggiero, a very noble youth. The public do not applaud, because they are sorry for his death and, besides, it would be an insult to Rinaldo if they were to applaud at the death of his brother-in-law."

On hearing this the buffo borrowed my handkerchief and wiped away two tears, one from each of his eyes, then he returned it politely and began mumbling to himself.

"What are you saying?" I inquired. "Why do you speak so low?"

"Oh, it's nothing," he replied, "I was merely reciting a prayer for the repose of the soul of poor Ruggiero."

* * * * *

The next morning I was down before him and had nearly finished my coffee when he came slowly and sadly into the dining-room. I said:

"Good morning, Buffo mio, and I hope you have had a good night and slept well after your long journey and your evening at the theatre."

He sat down, put his arm on the table and mournfully rested his head on his hand.

"My dear Enrico," he said, "I have passed a night of horror. I did not get to sleep at all, and then I was continually waking up again—"

"Nonsense, Buffo," I exclaimed.

"But it's not nonsense. Ah! you do not know what it is to lie awake all night, sleepless and trembling, between sheets that are made of lava, and to hear footsteps and the clanking of armour and to see Rinaldo shining in the dark and threatening you as he holds over you his sword, Fusberta, and shouts in your ear: 'How dare you applaud when my brother-in-law is killed?'"

He seemed to enjoy his coffee, however, and to be ready for plenty of exertion. He wanted a piece of lava to take home with him, and would it not be possible to pick up a piece if we went to the slopes of Etna? So we made inquiries and were told where to find the station of the Circum-Etnea Railway and started soon after breakfast for Paterno. The soil was black with lava and the wind was tremendous and carried the gritty dust into our mouths and down our necks. In that way he got plenty of lava to take home, but he wanted a large piece, and we could not stop the train and get out and break a piece of rock off, besides, we had nothing to break it with. We were like that old sailor in the poem who was surrounded by water, water everywhere, but not a drop of a kind to satisfy his immediate requirements. It was just as bad at Paterno; from the station to the town all our energies were required to get along in the blinding wind and the stinging dust and then we had to have our luncheon.

"And what would you like for colazione, Buffo?"

"Seppia and interiori di pollo, if you please."

But he had to be a Sicilian and eat maccaroni with me, because the inn could not provide what he wanted. Altogether the day was perhaps something of a failure, and we returned without the piece of lava.

In the evening we went to the Birraria Svizzera, and he ate his seppia while I got through my maccaroni. When his interiori di pollo came I said:

"I will do my best to eat what you eat, not exactly but as nearly as I can. Instead of a veal cutlet I will have part of an esteriore di pollo. It rather surprises me that you should always eat the same things. Gildo said you like plenty of variety."

"So I do," he replied. "Look at my plate. Can you imagine a more delicious variety?"

I looked and said: "Certainly there is variety; I doubt whether our English fowls could show so much. But—well, as long as you like it—"

Being rather tired after our day in the country we did not go to any theatre, we stayed in the Birraria till bed-time talking and listening to the music.

* * * * *

Next day was the last of the buffo's holiday, and I proposed another excursion, but he said:

"Suppose we pretend that we have come to Catania on an excursion, and then we can spend the day in the city. I want to buy some things to take home with me for my sisters."

Accordingly we looked in the shop-windows and chose three ornamental combs made of celluloid for the three sisters, a snuff-box for papa, made of dried bergamot skin smelling so as to scent the snuff, and a pair of braces for Gildo. It seemed a pity that the buffo should not have something also, so he chose for himself a handkerchief with a picture of the elephant of lava over the fountain in the piazza and he gave me in return a metal pencil-case. Then the question of the piece of lava had to be taken up again. We consulted the landlord, who produced a bit—exactly what was wanted and only one franc fifty. We had been wandering about in search of it and there it was all the time in the same house with us.

"What on earth are you going to do with it, Buffo?"

"Why, everyone who goes to Catania brings home a piece of lava."

"Yes, but what do they want it for? It might be a neat chimney ornament, but you have no fireplace in your house. Or you might use it as a paper-weight, but in your family you scarcely ever write a letter."

He looked at me sadly for a moment and then said:

"I thought you were an artist and now you are being practical. Usefulness is not everything. This piece of lava will be for me an object of eternal beauty, and when I contemplate it I shall think of the happy time we have spent here together."

I said: "O Buffo! don't go on like that or you will make me cry."

In the evening we went to the Teatro Machiavelli and saw a performance by living players. In the first act a good young man introduced Rosina to the cavaliere, who congratulated him on having won the affections of so virtuous and lovely a girl. The cavaliere gave a bad old woman one hundred francs, and in return she promised to procure him an interview with Rosina. The bad old woman persuaded Rosina to enter a house in which we knew the cavaliere was. The good young man asked the bad old woman what she had done with his girl; of course she had done nothing with her, but we heard shrieks. The good young man became suspicious, broke open the door of the house and, on learning the worst, shot the bad old woman dead and was taken by the police.

"This seems as though it were going to be a very interesting play," said the buffo when the curtain had fallen.

"Yes," said I, "what do you think will happen next?"

"You ought to know that," he replied; "it's no use asking me. I never saw a Sicilian play in Rio."

"Of course not; I was forgetting. I should say that the good young man will be acquitted because it was justifiable homicide or that he will return after a short term of imprisonment; in any case I think he will marry Rosina and live happily ever after."

"I see," he replied. "You think it will be a comedy. People who take a gloomy view of life naturally expect something cheerful in the theatre. But what if it is a tragedy? And how are you going to dispose of the cavaliere? Is he to carry his wickedness through your comedy?"

"You want it to be a tragedy because you are a buffo, I suppose. Now let me think. If you are right—"

Before I could see my way to a tragic plot, the curtain rose on Act II. The women of the village were going to Mass, but Rosina, reduced to ragged misery, fell on the steps, not worthy to enter. The cavaliere came by and offered her money, which she indignantly spurned. A good old woman, who happened to be passing, scowled at the cavaliere and kindly led Rosina away. An old man returned from America, where he had been for twenty years to escape the consequences of a crime the details of which he ostentatiously suppressed. This was his native village; he began recognising things and commenting on the changes. Rosina came to him begging. He looked at her and passed his hand over his eyes as he said:

"My girl, why are you begging at your age—so young, so fair?"

"Ah! Old man, I am in ragged misery because my father committed a crime."

"A crime! What crime?"

So Rosina told him about it and the escape of the criminal to America. The tears in her voice were so copious that her words were nearly drowned, but that did not signify; we were intelligent enough to have already guessed the relationship between them and we knew that she must be supplying the details which he had suppressed.

He struggled with his surging emotions as he watched her delivering her sad tale and we felt more and more certain that we must be right. There came a pause. She buried her face in her hands. The old man spoke:

"Twenty years, did you say?"

"Twenty years."

"And what was your mother's name?"

"Concetta."

"Dio mio! And your name?"

"Rosina."

"Mia figlia!"

"Mio padre!"

Here they fell into each other's arms and the orchestra let loose a passage of wild allegria which it had been holding in reserve. The revelation of the cause of the ragged misery followed and was nearing its conclusion when the cavaliere happened to pass by. Rosina pointed him out to her father, who first made a speech at him and then shot him dead. Rosina wept over his body, although she hated him, and the curtain fell.

"That was very beautiful," said the buffo. "Do you still think it will be a comedy? I still believe it will be a tragedy."

"I am not sure," I replied, "but we shall soon know. Did not the old man listen well?"

"Yes. It was like life. Did you observe how he made little calculations for himself while she told him the story?"

"Yes, and one could see it all agreed with what he knew."

"He was like your father reading his friend's letter. The cap fitted him and he put it on."

"Bravo, Buffo!"

"And when he made as though he would stroke her hair and drew back because he was not yet sure—oh, it was beautiful! But there was one thing I did not quite understand. Why did the cavaliere fall dead?"

"Because the father shot him," I replied.

"He aimed in the other direction."

"I also noticed that the old man fired to the right and the cavaliere fell on his left, but that was only because of a little defect of stage management. It does not do to be fastidious. You must not forget that they are doing the play as Snug the joiner did Lion, it has never been written. It will go more smoothly next time."

"Thank you. You see, I am not a regular theatre-goer. There is another thing that puzzled me. You remember the bad old woman in the first act who was shot? Should you think I was being too fastidious if I asked you why she rose from the dead and led Rosina kindly away in the second act? No doubt it will be explained presently, but, in the meantime, if you—"

"She did not rise from the dead; it was a different woman."

"It was the same woman."

"Anyone could tell you are a Portuguese or an Englishman or whatever you are—a foreigner of some kind; no Sicilian would make such an objection. It was the same actress, but a different character in the drama. That was either because they have not enough ladies in the company, or because the lady who ought to have taken one part or the other is away on a holiday, or because the lady who acted wanted to show she could do a good old woman and a bad old woman equally well."

"Thank you very much. You can hardly expect—But hush! they are beginning the third act, which will explain everything."

The curtain rose again. The background represented an elegant circular temple built of sponge cake, strawberry ice and spangles; it stood at the end of a perspective of columns constructed of the same materials, and between the columns were green bushes in ornamental flower-pots—all very pretty and gay—"molto bellissimo," as the buffo said. The orchestra struck up a jigging tune in six-eight time in a minor key with a refrain in the tonic major, and a washed-out youth in evening dress with a receding forehead, a long, bony nose, an eye-glass, prominent upper-teeth, no chin, a hat on the back of his head, a brown greatcoat over his arm, shiny boots, a cigarette and a silver-topped cane, entered. I whispered:

"Is he dressed well enough for an Englishman?

"Yes," whispered the buffo, "but this is no Englishman. Don't you see who it is and where we are? This is the good young man in paradise. His punishment has been too much for him and he has died in prison."

"But, Buffo mio," I objected, "it's a different person altogether; it's not a bit like him."

"It may be a different actor—I think it is—but it is the same character in the drama. That is either because they have too many men in the company, or because the actor who did the good young man in the first act has gone home to supper and another is finishing his part for him, or because—I can't think of any other reason just now, and I want to hear what he is saying."

Except for his clothes, the creature on the stage was little more than a limp and a dribble, but there was enough of him to sing a song telling us in the Neapolitan dialect that his notion of happiness was to stroll up and down the Toledo ogling the girls. When he had finished acknowledging the applause he departed and his place was taken by a lady no longer young, in flimsy pale blue muslin, a low neck and sham diamonds. There lingered about her a hungry wistfulness, as though she were still hoping to get a few more drops of enjoyment out of the squeezed orange of her wasted life.

"And this must be Rosina," whispered the buffo; "Dio mio, how death has aged her!" Seeing I was about to speak, he interrupted me: "It does not do to be fastidious. No real Sicilian would make any objection."

The lady sang a song telling us in the Neapolitan dialect that her notion of happiness was to stroll up and down the Toledo ogling the men. When she had finished acknowledging the applause she departed and, almost immediately, they both came on together.

"I told you so," exclaimed the buffo triumphantly; "they have met in paradise and are happy at last."

They performed a duet in the Neapolitan dialect and showed us how they strolled up and down the Toledo ogling one another. After they had finished acknowledging the applause the curtain fell and we all left the theatre. I said:

"I do not know whether you are aware of what you have done, but by making that temple of spangled pastry into heaven you have wrecked your tragedy."

"Oh, I gave up my tragedy as soon as I saw where we were, and the play ended quite in your manner, didn't it? like the Comedy of Dante. Or do you mean that you have any doubts about that last act taking place in heaven?"

"I have many doubts about that."

"I admit, of course, that it would have been more satisfactory, and much clearer as a comedy, if we could have seen them both die before they went to paradise."

"Would you like me to tell you the plain, straightforward, honest, manly, brutal truth about it?"

"Very much indeed, if you don't mind; but I should not like you to strain yourself on my account."

"All right, Buffo, I'll be careful. Now listen. I don't believe that the last act, as you call it, had anything to do with the story. It was a music-hall turn added at the end of the play merely to close the entertainment and send the audience away in good spirits."

"But that wrecks your comedy. And if the play was neither comedy nor tragedy, what was it? You cannot expect a simple Portuguese gentleman from Rio to understand your Sicilian dramas all at once."

"And we have not time now to discuss the question exhaustively, for if you do not go to bed immediately you will never be up to-morrow in time to catch your train back to Palermo, and if you are late what will papa say and what will the public think when they find nothing ready in the teatrino?"

"That is true. Good night and thank you very much for my holiday and for all you have done for me."

"Prego, prego; I thank you for giving me the pleasure of your company."

"Not at all."

"But I assure you—"

"If you go on like this I shall begin to cry, and then I shall not sleep at all, and that will be worse than sitting up to discuss the play. So good night, finally."

"Good night, Buffo. You will forgive me if I do not see you off in the morning; I do not want to get up at half-past five. I wish you Buon viaggio. Give my love to papa and Gildo and my respectful compliments to the sisters. Have you got your lump of lava and all your other goods? That's right. Sleep well and do not dream of Rosina and the good young man."

"Arrivederci."



TRAPANI

CHAPTER VIII THE NASCITA

Once I was at Trapani in September, and observed in a small shop in a back street some queer little dolls' heads made of wax. They seemed to form a set, some women and some men, and there were hands of wax to match. I did not think much about them, one cannot very well investigate everything one notices in a Sicilian town, and, as I turned away, these little heads were driven out of mine by Ignazio Giacalone, who was coming down the street. He is a young avvocato whom I have known since he was a student. He told me that he was going to be married next day, and invited me to his wedding.

In the evening another friend of mine, also an avvocato, Alberto Scalisi, came to the albergo to take his coffee and, as we all sat smoking and talking, something was said about an article on the Nascita written by him and recently published in L'Amico, a Trapanese Sunday newspaper. I knew nothing about the Nascita, but I knew something about the avvocato whose acquaintance I had made a few years previously at the house of my friend Signor Decio D'Ali, with whom I had been dining. After dinner many guests, including the avvocato Scalisi, came to the house to rehearse a play they were preparing for a charity performance; they were all amateurs, and I never saw amateurs act so well. The Signora Decio D'Ali and the Avvocato Scalisi were the best; his was a comic part, and he did it with so much natural humour that I was anxious to read his article whatever the Nascita might be, as to which they gave me some preliminary information. They reminded me of the Presepio, the representation of the Nativita at Bethlehem, which it is the custom in many places to make at Christmas; there is a most elaborate one, treated as though the event had happened in modern times, preserved in the convent of S. Martino, in Naples; there is one in the Musee de Cluny in Paris, L'Adoration des Rois et des Bergers, Art Napolitain XVIII siecle. I was most familiar with such things in the chapels on the Sacro Monte at Varallo-Sesia, where the figures are the size of life. When they saw I had got hold of the idea, they told me that in Trapani it is the custom in the homes of the sailors to celebrate the 8th September by making a representation of the house of S. Joachim as it appeared on the occasion of the birth of his daughter, the Madonna, and to keep it on view for three weeks, till S. Michael's day. They do not do this in any other town, and the avvocato's article was about one he had seen.

Next morning about 7.30 Ignazio's father most politely called for me in a carriage and pair and, accompanied by two other guests, we drove to the house of the bride's family, where there was a crowd of people, and we were all presented; then we proceeded to the Municipio, where the civil part of the marriage was performed; after which we returned to the bride's house and went through the religious service at an altar that had been erected in one of the rooms. We admired the presents and the flowers, partook of refreshments and exchanged compliments till it was time to go, and I carried away with me a copy of L'Amico given me by the Avvocato Scalisi, who was one of the guests.

While reading his article I recognised that the little waxen heads and hands must be part of the raw material for a Nascita, and in my mind I identified certain figures in the museum which Conte Pepoli was then arranging in the disused convent of the Annunziata as remains of old examples of the Nascita and of the Nativita. Nothing would do for it then but I must see a Nascita, and the difficulty was how to proceed. One cannot very well go round knocking at all the doors in a Sicilian town and asking if they have made a Nascita; the Avvocato Scalisi had gone off to another wedding or to defend a mafioso, or to transact whatever business falls to the lot of a Trapanese avvocato. Mario, my coachman, takes no interest in anything to do with religion in any shape, so he was no use, and everyone else I spoke to was very kind about it but evidently did not know how to help me.

I considered what I should do if at Hastings or Grimsby or Newlyn I wanted to get inside a fisherman's cottage, and it occurred to me that I should consult the parson. I knew a priest at Trapani whose acquaintance I had made at Custonaci, but I did not know where he was. I boldly stopped a couple of strange priests in the street and asked if they knew my priest; they did, and one of them took me to his house. It was rather mean of me to call upon him merely to ask him to help me to find a Nascita, I ought to have wanted to salute him and enjoy his company; but he did not appear to think it rude, and we went together to the old part of the town where the sailors live and asked at a house where he knew they always used to make a Nascita, but this year there was none. They told us of another likely house, but again we were disappointed. We tried several more without success, and at last I exclaimed:

"What a lack of faith!"

But my priest replied that that was not the explanation; it was lack of money, because these things cannot be made for nothing.

We could not then call at more houses because he was busy with his own affairs; it was his dinner-time, or he had to go to a wedding or a funeral or to do whatever it is that Trapanese priests do in the afternoon, so we postponed our search till the evening, when he returned with his brother, another priest, who knew a family who had made a Nascita, and we went to their house.

We were shown into a large room, at the end of which, on a long table, was a sort of rabbit hutch or doll's house, all on one floor, about eighteen inches high, with the front off showing that it was divided into eight square compartments, so that the whole hutch was about twelve feet long, the width of the room. These compartments were the rooms of Joachim's house or flat, as we should say, and the figures in them were about eight inches high. In the arts actual size counts for little and, as with the marionettes, I soon accepted the dolls as representatives of men and women and felt as though I were present at some such family festival as Ignazio's wedding, and the rooms, all leading one into the other, contributed to the illusion.

We were asked to begin with the entrance. The front part of it had been let to a cobbler who was sitting at his bench mending a shoe, and if it had been real life he would have been singing. Behind him was a garden of artificial flowers with a fountain of real water that was not playing that evening. A door led through the side wall into the second compartment, which was a salone. The porter, in evening dress, was introducing a married couple, also in evening dress, who had been invited and were accompanied by their baby in the arms of the wet-nurse. This compartment was divided by a partition with an open door through which one saw an alcove, or back room, with a buffet loaded with sweets, cakes, and ices, at which the guests were to refresh themselves as they passed. At Ignazio's wedding footmen carried the refreshments about on trays. A door in the side led to the third compartment, where children were dancing to a toy piano with four real notes. I struck one and it sounded. A lady doll was playing, and I looked at her music, but the notes were too small for my eyes, so I asked our hostess what music it was, and she replied that it was a selection from the Geisha. I remembered then that there had recently been in the town a travelling opera company performing that work which is so popular in Italy that one often hears the boys whistling the airs in the streets. A surname is not of much practical use in Sicily, and some of my friends have not mastered mine, but by those who know it, and who also know that it is the same as that of the composer of the Geisha, I have sometimes been credited with the music of his opera, a compliment which it distresses me to be compelled to decline. In the alcove behind were musicians playing guitars. I did not strike a note on a guitar, feeling sure that it would be out of tune with the piano.

A door in the side wall led to the fourth room, where S. Joachim was entertaining four kings who wore their crowns. These kings have nothing to do with Gaspare, Melchiorre, and Baldassare, who fall down and worship the infant Jesus, opening their treasures and presenting unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh, on the occasion of the Nativita. Those three were led from the East to the manger at Bethlehem by the miraculous star; these in Joachim's room came in response to the usual cards of invitation sent by the family, just as the relations and guests came to Ignazio's wedding. The Madonna had, I think my priest told me, forty kings and sixty condottieri in her pedigree. Invitations had been issued to all their descendants, and no doubt all had accepted, but, owing to want of means on the part of the artist who made this Nascita and want of space in the rabbit hutch, only four kings could be shown. It is not everyone who can entertain so many as four kings; there were none at Ignazio's wedding. In this room there was also a monsignore with red buttons to his sottana, he had an attendant who, my priest told me, was a seminarista. In the alcove behind was Joachim's bed, and the empty cup from which he had drunk his morning black coffee stood on the table by his bedside.

The door leading to the fifth room was partly concealed by a notice with these words: "E Nata Maria," and, accordingly, here we found the new-born child in an elaborate cradle attended by three angels who were planted on the floor in front of her, rather a Christmas-cardy group. Four queens with crowns had come, no doubt they were the wives of Joachim's kings, and there was a Jewish priest whom I took to be Simeon, he had a head-covering with horns such as Caiaphas wears at Varallo. My priest, however, assured me that Simeon was not a priest, he was only "un uomo qualunque"; and he would have it that the figure represented Melchizedek. This occasion must not be confused with a subsequent one when the Nunc Dimittis was improvised by Simeon, who, he said, could not have lived long enough to be present on both occasions.

"Reverend Father," I objected, "pardon me if I give you an example which points in the other direction. The best man or, as you would say, the compare at my grandfather's wedding not only lived to perform the ceremony of marrying my father and mother, but lived long enough also to marry my brother."

The priest wavered, but was not convinced; he repeated that this was Melchizedek and that he always appears at the birth of the Madonna, and I was so much under the spell of the Nascita that I could not remember precisely when Melchizedek lived. Whoever this personage was, he had passed into this room from Joachim's room on the day of the Sacred Name of Maria, that is on the Sunday after the birth, and he had officiated at the baptism. On the floor was a bath of water with cinnamon, in which the baby had been washed and with which the guests were to cross themselves. S. Anna was in her bedroom in the alcove behind, but not in bed, she got up and sat in a chair on the ninth day after the birth.

Through the door in the side the guests were to pass to the sixth room, where there were nuns engaged in household duties, mending the linen, darning the stockings, and so on. One was working a sewing-machine, and in the alcove behind was their bedroom.

The side door led to the seventh room, where there was another nun ironing and directing the servants who were making quince marmalade and extract of pomidoro and discharging similar autumnal duties; behind was the servants' bedroom.

Lastly we came to the eighth room, which, like the front entrance, filled the whole compartment and had no alcove. This was the kitchen and dining-room in one. The hospitable board was spread with such profusion that there was not room on it for another egg-cup. Here Joachim was to entertain the kings and queens to dinner later on. Three Turks and one female servant were controlling affairs, making the cuscuso and preparing the maccaroni. There were young chickens in a corner; I inquired for their mother, and was told she was busy making the soup; then I saw that a saucepan was simmering on the stove. The walls were hung with brightly polished copper cooking utensils and there were baskets of maccaroni on the floor.

The three principal rooms were carpeted with tissue-paper advertisements of a new bar in the Via Torrearsa which has lately been opened by relations of our host. Each room was lighted by a naked candle kept in place upon the floor by a drop of wax. All the walls were hung with wall-papers, originally designed for larger apartments, and adorned with pictures, among which I observed Carlo Dolci's Ecce Homo. The Avvocato Scalisi saw, or says he saw, two saints flanking an advertisement of cod-liver oil, and in Joachim's room was a portrait of Pope Pius X blessing the company which included besides the kings a couple of officers in uniform. But then the Avvocato Scalisi is a humorist, and the trouble with humorists is that they are too fond of assuming all their readers to be humorists also, whereas they sometimes have a reader of another kind who is puzzled to know whether what they say is to be taken seriously or not.

We were about to make our compliments preliminary to departure, when our host produced a tray with marsala and biscuits, so we sat down for a few minutes and I observed what I took to be a little waxen paladin among the wine-glasses. He was, however, no paladin, though he wore armour and a helmet; he was S. Michele waiting to arrive on his festa, the 29th September. It was now the 20th and, partly to please me and partly because it did not much matter for a day or two, he arrived at once. He had wings, but they wanted repairing, so I carried him carefully from the tray and deposited him in the corner of the room in which the baby lay.

My priest found several other examples of the Nascita and took me to see them before I left Trapani. The differences were slight; in one case there were only three rooms; in another the rooms were divided so as to vary in size; in another the rooms had windows at the back with balconies. Sometimes the guests were reading the Giornale di Sicilia, and I saw opera-glasses on the table in one room and in another the gentlemen had deposited their tall hats on the sofa. There were book-cases full of books and the bedrooms were furnished down to the most insignificant but necessary details. S. Joachim in one of the houses was entertaining only three friends, and they had no kingly marks upon them; they were perhaps descendants of the condottieri. I thought afterwards of going back to inquire, but one cannot very well return to a house where one has seen a Nascita and ask to be allowed to look again to make sure whether or not the guests have hung up their crowns on the hat pegs of the umbrella-stand at the front entrance. There was something about these gentlemen, something in their costume as they sat at a round table with S. Joachim, a queer 1830 feeling that put me in mind of Mr. Pickwick and his three friends sitting in their private room at the "George and Vulture," George Yard, Lombard Street, except that they were only drinking coffee.

In the garden at the entrance to one house was a baby taking the air in a perambulator and a band of eight musicians with a conductor. There was real water with a tap and a basin in the kitchen so that the guests might wash their hands after dinner. There was a mouse-trap in the corner of the kitchen. In one room the guests were playing cards, in another eating ices, and I observed a toy piano with the extended compass of six notes.

In all the kitchens there was a Turk for the cuscuso. It is made with fish, semolina, and onions in a double saucepan which in England is called a steamer. In the bottom part water is boiled; in the top part, over the holes, they put a layer of chopped onions, and over that the semolina which has been previously made into very small balls by damping it. The onions prevent the semolina from falling through the holes into the water, and the steam of the water coming through cooks the semolina and the onions. The fish are put into the water at the right moment and are boiled while the semolina is being steamed. It is all served together like bouillabaisse, the semolina answering to the bread, and extract of pomidoro is added. One would not be likely to meet with cuscuso in the houses of the well-to-do; one might get it in the albergo by insisting on it, but they would rather not provide it because, like the Discobolus in Butler's poem A Psalm of Montreal, it is vulgar. I have eaten it only once when I dined with my compare Michele Lombardo, a jeweller, to whose son I stood as padrino at his cresima, and I do not care to eat it again, not because it is vulgar, but because I did not find it nearly so good as bouillabaisse. The recipe for it has penetrated to Trapani from Africa as a result of the constant intercourse between Sicily and the French colony of Tunis, the fishermen of Trapani going over to the African coast not only for fish, but also for coral and for sponges.

My priest was inclined to treat the Nascita with tolerant contempt; he muttered the word "Anacronismo" several times and, since I have ascertained that Melchizedek was a contemporary of Abraham, I think he should not have done so. I said that the anachronisms did not disturb me. I told him that in the marionette theatre in Palermo, when Cristoforo Colombo embarks from the port of Palos in Spain to discover America, a sailor, sitting on the paddle-box of the piroscafo, the steamboat, sings that Neapolitan song Santa Lucia. I passed over the anticipation of steam and contented myself with asking the buffo whether the song had been composed so long ago and also whether its popularity had extended from Naples into Spain. He replied that it had extended to Palermo and that his audience connected it in their minds with the sea, and as for the date of its composition he had made no inquiries, but he knew it was older than "O Sole Mio"; we do not go to the arts for accurate archaeological details.

"I will make you a paragon," said the buffo. "When I was returning from Catania I looked out of the side windows of the train and saw that the telegraph posts, as we passed by, were some distance apart. But I made friends with the guard, who took me into his van, and when I looked at them again out of the back window of the train they seemed to get closer and closer together in the distance until, far away, there appeared to be no space between them; but I knew that there was always the same space between them. So it is with the centuries, when they are in the distant past it is difficult to distinguish in what century any particular event happened. History may settle such points, but the arts come to us from a country of the imagination whose laws of time and space are not as our laws. Art is trying to get the people to realise that a thing happened, not to teach them precisely when."