TALES
OF MY
NATIVE TOWN

TALES of my NATIVE TOWN

By

Gabriele D’Annunzio

TRANSLATED BY
PROF. RAFAEL MANTELLINI, Ph.D.
INSTRUCTOR OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES AT THE
BERKELEY-IRVING SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK LONDON
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF
TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES,
INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION By Joseph Hergesheimer

I

The attitude of mind necessary to a complete enjoyment of the tales in this book must first spring from the realisation that, as stories, they are as different from our own short imaginative fiction as the town of Pescara, on the Adriatic Sea, is different from Marblehead in Massachusetts. It is true that fundamentally the motives of creative writing, at least in the Western Hemisphere, are practically everywhere alike; they are what might be called the primary emotions, hatred and envy, love and cruelty, lust, purity and courage. There are others, but these are sufficient: and an analysis of The Downfall of Candia together with any considerable story native to the United States would disclose a similar genesis.

But men are not so much united by the deeper bonds of a common humanity as they are separated by the superficial aspects and prejudices of society. The New England town and Pescara, at heart very much the same, are far apart in the overwhelming trivialities of civilisation, and Signor D’Annunzio’s tales, read in a local state of being, might as well have remained untranslated. But this difference, of course, lies in the writer, not in his material; and Gabriele D’Annunzio is the special and peculiar product of modern Italy.

No other country, no other history, would have given birth to a genius made up of such contending and utterly opposed qualities: it is exactly as if all the small principalities that were Italy before the Risorgemento, all the amazing contradictions of stark heroics and depraved nepotism, the fanaticism and black blood and superstition, with the introspective and febrile weariness of a very old land, were bound into D’Annunzio’s being.

Not only is this true of the country and of the man, the difference noted, it particularly includes the writing itself. And exactly here is the difficulty which, above all others, must be overcome if pleasure is to result from “Tales of My Native Town.” These are not stories at all, in the sense of an individual coherent action with the stirring properties of a plot. The interest is not cunningly seized upon and stimulated and baffled up to a satisfactory finale. The formula that constitutes the base of practically every applauded story here—a determination opposed to hopeless odds but invariably triumphant—is not only missing from Tales of My Native Town, in the majority of cases it is controverted. For the greater part man is the victim of inimical powers, both within him and about; and fate, or rather circumstance, is too heavy for the defiance of any individual.

What, actually, has happened is that D’Annunzio has not disentangled these coherent fragments from the mass of life. He has not lifted his tales into the crystallised isolation of a short story: they merge from the beginning and beyond the end into the general confusion of existence, they are moments, significantly tragic or humorous, selected from the whole incomprehensible sweep of a vastly larger work, and presented as naturally as possible. However, they are not without form, in reality these tales are woven with an infinite delicacy, an art, like all art, essentially artificial. But a definite interest in them, the sense of their beauty, must rise from an intrinsic interest in the greater affair of being. It is useless for anyone not impressed with the beauty of sheer living as a spectacle to read “Tales of My Native Town.”

II

The clear understanding of a divergence should result in a common ground of departure, of sympathy, and to make this plainer still it ought to be added that in the question of taste, of the latitude of allowable material and treatment, the Italians are far more comprehensive than ourselves. This, certainly, is particularly true in their attitude toward the relation of the sexes; and here is, perhaps, the greatest difference between what might be loosely called a Latin literature and an Anglo-Saxon. We are almost exclusively interested in the results, the reactions, of sexual contacts; but the former have their gaze fixed keenly on the process itself. At the most we indicate that consummations of passion have occurred, and then turn, with a feeling of relief, to what we are convinced is the greater importance of its consequences.

But not only is Gabriele D’Annunzio perfectly within his privilege in lingering over any important, act of nature, he is equally at liberty to develop all the smaller expressions of lust practically barred from English or American pens. These, undeniably, have as large an influence in one country, one man, as in another; they are—as small things are apt to be—more powerful in the end than the greatest attributes. Yet while we have agreed to ignore them, to discard them as ignoble and obscene, in “Tales of My Native Town” erotic gestures and thoughts, libidinous whispers, play their inevitable devastating part.

Yet this is not a book devoted to such impulses; one tale only, although in many ways that is the best, has as its motive lust. It is rather in the amazingly direct treatment of disease, of physical abnormality, that it will be disturbing to the unprepared reader from an entirely different and less admirable, or, at any rate, less honest, convention. Undoubtedly D’Annunzio’s unsparing revelation of human deformity and ills will seem morbid to the unaccustomed mind; but, conversely, it can be urged that the dread of these details is in itself morbid. Then, too, we have an exaggerated horror of the unpleasant, a natural, but saccharine, preference for happiness. As a nation we are not conspicuously happier than Italy, but we clamour with a deafening insistence for the semblance of a material good fortune. Meeting pain no better and no worse than other nations, from our written stories we banish it absolutely; but anyone who cares to realise the beauty that, beyond question, pervades the following pages will be obliged to harden himself to meet precisely the deplorable accidents that he must face wherever life has been contaminated by centuries of brutal ignorance, oppression and want.

Again, it is not in the larger aspects, the nobler phases, of suffering with which we are concerned, but in the cold revelation of rasping details, brutal sores and deformity, the dusty spiders of paralysis. If this were all it would be hideous beyond support; but, fortunately, the coldness is only in the method, there is a saving spirit of pity, the valid humanity born of understanding. Such horror as exists here is the result of D’Annunzio’s sensitive recognition of the weight of poverty and superstition crushing men into unspeakable fatalities of the flesh. A caustic humour, as well, illuminates the darker pits of existence, ironic rather than satirical, bitter rather than fatalistic; and then admirably exposing the rough play of countrymen like the rough wine of their Province. In addition there is always, for reassurance, the inclusion of the simple bravery that in itself leavens both life and books with hope.

III

Yet, with the attention directed so exclusively upon national differences, equally it must be said that no individual has ever written into literature a more minute examination of actuality than that in “Tales of My Native Town.” Indeed, to find its counterpart it would be necessary to turn to the relentlessly veracious paintings of the early Dutchmen, or the anatomical canvasses of El Greco. D’Annunzio’s descriptions of countenances are dermatological, the smallest pores are carefully traced, the shape and hue and colour of every feature. This is set down not only directly but by means of remarkable similies: Binchi-Blanche has a surly, yellow-lined face like a lemon without any juice; Africana’s husband’s mouth resembles the cut in a rotten pumpkin; Ciarole’s face was that of a gilded wooden effigy from which the gilding had partly worn off; while Biagio Quaglia reflected the brilliancy and freshness of an almond tree in springtime.

The direct descriptions are often appalling, since, as has already been indicated, nothing is considered unimportant; there are literally no reservations, or rather, no, prejudices. The physical disintegration that accompanies death is, as well, recorded to the last black clot and bubble of red froth. D’Annunzio is not afraid of death in the context of his pages, he is never reluctant to meet the great facts, the terrible penalties, of existence; rather it is upon them that his writing is founded; it has, in the main, in these tales, two sides, one of violence, of murder and venom, and the other an idyllic presentation of a setting, an environment, saturated with classic and natural beauty.

The mind, now horrified by the dislocated beggars gathered about the blind Mungia, is suddenly swept into the release of evening fragrantly cool like myrtles; or Turlendana returns from his long voyages and, with his amazing animals, makes his way home into Pescara: “The river of his native place carried to him the peaceful air of the sea.... The silence was profound. The cobwebs shone tranquilly in the sun like mirrors framed by the crystal of the sea.” He passes with the Cyclopean camel, the monkey and the she-ass across the boat bridge and: “Far behind the mountain of Gran Sasso the setting sun irradiated the spring sky ... and from the damp earth, the water of the river, the seas, and the ponds, the moisture had arisen. A rosy glow tinted the houses, the sails, the masts, the plants, and the whole landscape, and the figures of the people, acquiring a sort of transparency, grew obscure, the lines of their contour wavering in the fading light.”

Nothing could surpass in peacefulness this vision, a scene like a mirage of fabulous days wrapped in tender colour. Throughout the tale of The Virgin Anna, too, there are, in spite of the vitriolic realism of its spirit, the crystal ecstasies of white flocks of girls before the Eucharist of their first communion. While it was Anna’s father who came ashore from his voyages to the island of Rota with his shirt all scented with southern fruit. The Virgin Anna has many points of resemblance to that other entranced peasant in Une Vie Simple; but Anna had a turtle in place of a parrot, and D’Annunzio is severer with his subject than was Flaubert.

But such idylls are quickly swept away in the fiery death of the Duke of Orfena, with the pistols ringing in high stately chambers, and Mazzagrogna, the major-domo, a dripping corpse, hanging in the railing of a balcony. There is no shrinking, no evasion, here; and none is permitted the reader:—the flames that consume the Duke are not romantic figments, their fierce energy scorches the imagination.

IV

These qualities belong to a high order of creative writing, they can never be the property of mere talent, they have no part in concessions to popular and superficial demands. This does not necessarily imply a criticism of the latter: it is not a crime to prefer happiness to misery, and certainly the tangible facts of happiness are success and the omnipotence of love. Tales and stories exist as a source of pleasure, but men take their pleasures with a difference; and for any who are moved by the heroic spectacle of humanity pinned by fatality to earth but forever struggling for release “Tales of My Native Town” must have a deep significance.

No one has abhorred brutality and deception more passionately than Gabriele D’Annunzio, and no one has held himself more firmly to the exact drawing of their insuperable evils. But this is not all; it is not, perhaps, even the most important aspect: that may well be his fascinating art. Here, above all, the contending elements, of his being, the brilliant genius of the Renaissance, predominate; an age bright with blood and gold and silk, an age of poetry as delicately cultivated as its assassinations. It was a period logical and cruel, lovely and corrupt; and, to an extraordinary degree, it has its reflection in D’Annunzio’s writing.

Yet, in him, it is troubled by modern apprehensions, a social conscience unavoidable now to any fineness of perception. His tales are no longer simply the blazing arbitrary pictures of the Quatrocento; they possess our own vastly more burdened spirit. In this, as well, they are as American as they are Italian; the crimes and beggars and misery of Pescara, the problems and hopes of one, belong to the other; the bonds of need and sympathy are complete.

The tales themselves are filled with energy and movement, the emotions are in high keys. At times a contest of will, of temptation playing with fear, as in The Gold Pieces, they rise to pitched battles between whole towns; the factions, more often than not led by Holy reliques and statues, a sacred arm in silver or the sparkling bust of a Saint with a solar disc, massed with scythes and bars and knives, meet in sanguinary struggle. Or again the passions smoulder into individual bitterness and scandal and mean hatred. The Duchess of Amalfi is such a chronicle, the record of Don Giovà’s devastating passion for Violetta Kutufa, who came to Pescara with a company of singers at Carnival.

Nothing is omitted that could add to the veracity, the inevitable collapse, of this almost senile Don Juan; while the psychology of the ending is an accomplishment of arresting power and fitness. There is in The Duchess of Amalfi a vivid presentation of Pescara itself, the houses and Violetta’s room scented with cyprus-powder, the square with the cobblers working and eating figs, a caged blackbird whistling the Hymn of Garibaldi, the Casino, immersed in shadow, its tables sprinkled with water.

Around Pescara is the level sea, the river and mountains and the broad campagnia, the vines, the wine vats and oil presses, the dwellings of mud and reeds; the plain is flooded with magnificent noon, and, at night, Turlendana, drunk, is mocked by the barking of vagrant dogs; the men linger under Violetta’s lighted windows, and the strains of her song run through all the salons, all the heads, of the town.... It is as far away as possible, and yet, in its truth, implied in every heart.

TALES OF MY NATIVE TOWN

I THE HERO

Already the huge standards of Saint Gonselvo had appeared on the square and were swaying heavily in the breeze. Those who bore them in their hands were men of herculean stature, red in the face and with their necks swollen from effort; and they were playing with them.

After the victory over the Radusani the people of Mascalico celebrated the feast of September with greater magnificence than ever. A marvellous passion for religion held all souls. The entire country sacrificed the recent richness of the corn to the glory of the Patron Saint. Upon the streets from one window to another the women had stretched their nuptial coverlets. The men had wreathed with vines the doorways and heaped up the thresholds with flowers. As the wind blew along the streets there was everywhere an immense and dazzling undulation which intoxicated the crowd.

From the church the procession proceeded to wind in and out and to lengthen out as far as the square. Before the altar, where Saint Pantaleone had fallen, eight men, privileged souls, were awaiting the moment for the lifting of the statue of Saint Gonselvo; their names were: Giovanni Curo, l’Ummalido, Mattala, Vencenzio Guanno, Rocco di Cenzo, Benedetto Galante, Biagio di Clisci, Giovanni Senzapaura. They stood in silence, conscious of the dignity of their work, but with their brains slightly confused. They seemed very strong; had the burning eye of the fanatic, and wore in their ears, like women, two circles of gold. From time to time they tested their biceps and wrists as if to calculate their vigour; or smiled fugitively at one another.

The statue of the Patron Saint was enormous, very heavy, made of hollow bronze, blackish, with the head and hands of silver.

Mattala cried:

“Ready!”

The people, everywhere, struggled to see. The windows of the church roared at every gust of the wind. The nave was fumigated with incense and resin. The sounds of instruments were heard now and then. A kind of religious fever seized the eight men, in the centre of that turbulence. They extended their arms to be ready.

Mattala cried:

“One! Two! Three!”

Simultaneously the men made the effort to raise the statue to the altar. But its weight was overpowering, and the figure swayed to the left. The men had not yet succeeded in getting a firm grip around the base. They bent their backs in their endeavour to resist. Biagio di Clisci and Giovanni Curo, the least strong, lost their hold. The statue swerved violently to one side. L’Ummalido gave a cry.

“Take care! Take care!” vociferated the spectators on seeing the Patron Saint so imperilled. From the square came a resounding crash that drowned all voices.

L’Ummalido had fallen on his knees with his right arm beneath the bronze. Thus kneeling, he held his two large eyes, full of terror and pain, fixed on his hand which he could not free, while his mouth twisted but no longer spoke. Drops of blood sprinkled the altar.

His companions, all together, made a second effort to raise the weight. The operation was difficult. L’Ummalido, in a spasm of pain, twisted his mouth. The women spectators shuddered.

At length the statue was lifted and L’Ummalido withdrew his hand, crushed and bleeding and formless. “Go home, now! Go home!” the people cried, while pushing him toward the door of the church.

A woman removed her apron and offered it to him for a bandage. L’Ummalido refused it. He did not speak, but watched a group of men who were gesticulating and disputing around the statue.

“It is my turn!”

“No!—no! It’s my turn!”

“No! let me!”

Cicco Ponno, Mattia Seafarolo and Tommaso di Clisci were contending for the place left vacant by L’Ummalido.

He approached the disputants. Holding his bruised hand at his side, and with the other opening a path, he said simply:

“The position is mine.”

And he placed his left shoulder as a prop for the Patron Saint. He stifled down his pain, gritting his teeth, with fierce will-power.

Mattala asked him:

“What are you trying to do?”

He answered:

“What Saint Gonselvo wishes me to do.”

And he began to walk with the others. Dumbfounded the people watched him pass. From time to time, someone, on seeing the wound which was bleeding and growing black, asked him:

“L’Umma’, what is the matter?”

He did not answer. He moved forward gravely, measuring his steps by the rhythm of the music, with his mind a little hazy, beneath the vast coverlets that flapped in the wind and amongst the swelling crowd.

At a street corner he suddenly fell. The Saint stopped an instant and swayed, in the centre of a momentary confusion, then continued its progress. Mattia Scafarola supplied the vacant place. Two relations gathered up the swooning man and carried him to a nearby house.

Anna di Cenzo, who was an old woman, expert at healing wounds, looked at the formless and bloody member, and then shaking her head, said:

“What can I do with it?”

Her little skill was able to do nothing. L’Ummalido controlled his feelings and said nothing. He sat down and tranquilly contemplated his wound. The hand hung limp, forever useless, with the bones ground to powder.

Two or three aged farmers came to look at it. Each, with a gesture or a word, expressed the same thought.

L’Ummalido asked:

“Who carried the Saint in my place?”

They answered:

“Mattia Scafarola.”

Again he asked:

“What are they doing now?”

They answered:

“They are singing the vespers.”

The farmers bid him good-bye and left for vespers. A great chiming came from the mother church.

One of the relations placed near the wound a bucket of cold water, saying:

“Every little while put your hand in it. We must go. Let us go and listen to the vespers.”

L’Ummalido remained alone. The chiming increased, while changing its metre. The light of day began to wane. An olive tree, blown by the wind, beat its branches against the low window.

L’Ummalido began to bathe his hand little by little. As the blood and concretions fell away, the injury appeared even greater. L’Ummalido mused:

“It is entirely useless! It is lost. Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”

He took a knife and went out. The streets were deserted. All of the devotees were in the church. Above the houses sped, like fugitive herds of cattle, the violet clouds of a September sunset.

In the church the united multitude sang in measured intervals as if in chorus to the music of the instruments. An intense heat emanated from the human bodies and the burning tapers. The silver head of Saint Gonselvo scintillated from on high like a light house. L’Ummalido entered. To the stupefaction of all, he walked up to the altar and said, in a clear voice, while holding the knife in his left hand:

“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”

And he began to cut around the right wrist, gently, in full sight of the horrified people. The shapeless hand became detached little by little amidst the blood. It swung an instant suspended by the last filaments. Then it fell into a basin of copper which held the money offerings at the feet of the Patron Saint.

L’Ummalido then raised the bloody stump and repeated in a clear voice:

“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”

II THE COUNTESS OF AMALFI

I

When, one day, toward two o’clock in the afternoon, Don Giovanni Ussorio was about to set his foot on the threshold of Violetta Kutufas’ house, Rosa Catana appeared at the head of the stairs and announced in a lowered voice, while she bent her head:

“Don Giovà, the Signora has gone.”

Don Giovanni, at this unexpected news, stood dumbfounded, and remained thus for a moment with his eyes bulging and his mouth wide open While gazing upward as if awaiting further explanations. Since Rosa stood silently at the top of the stairs, twisting an edge of her apron with her hands and dilly-dallying somewhat, he asked at length:

“But tell me why? But tell me why?” And he mounted several steps while he kept repeating with a slight stutter:

“But why? But why?”

“Don Giovà, what have I to tell you? Only that she has gone.”

“But why?”

“Don Giovà, I do not know, so there!”

And Rosa took several steps on the landing-place toward the door of the empty apartment. She was rather a thin woman, with reddish hair, and face liberally scattered with freckles. Her large, ash-coloured eyes had nevertheless a singular vitality. The excessive distance between her nose and mouth gave to the lower part of her face the appearance of a monkey.

Don Giovanni pushed open the partly closed door and passed through the first room, and then the third; he walked around the entire apartment with excited steps; he stopped at the little room, set aside for the bath. The silence almost terrified him; a heavy anxiety weighted down his heart.

“It can’t be true! It can’t be true!” he murmured, staring around confusedly.

The furniture of the room was in its accustomed place, but there was missing from the table under the round mirror, the crystal phials, the tortoise-shell combs, the boxes, the brushes, all of those small objects that assist at the preparation of feminine beauty. In a corner stood a species of large, zinc kettle shaped like a guitar; and within it sparkled water tinted a delicate pink from some essence. The water exhaled subtle perfume that blended in the air with the perfume of cyprus-powder. The exhalation held in it some inherent quality of sensuousness.

“Rosa! Rosa!” Don Giovanni cried, in a voice almost extinguished by the insurmountable anxiety that he felt surging through him.

The woman appeared.

“Tell me how it happened! To what place has she gone? And when did she go? And why?” begged Don Giovanni, making with his mouth a grimace both comic and childish, in order to restrain his grief and force back the tears.

He seized Rosa by both wrists, and thus incited her to speak, to reveal.

“I do not know, Signor,” she answered. “This morning she put her clothes in her portmanteau, sent for Leones’ carriage, and went away without a word. What can you do about it? She will return.”

“Return-n-n!” sobbed Don Giovanni, raising his eyes in which already the tears had started to overflow. “Has she told you when? Speak!” And this last cry was almost threatening and rabid.

“Eh?... to be sure she said to me, ‘Addio, Rosa. We will never see each other again...! But, after all ... who can tell! Everything is possible.’”

Don Giovanni sank dejectedly upon a chair at these words, and set himself to weeping with so much force of grief that the woman was almost touched by it.

“Now what are you doing, Don Giovà? Are there not other women in this world? Don Giovà, why do you worry about it...?”

Don Giovanni did not hear. He persisted in weeping like a child and hiding his face in Rosa Catana’s apron; his whole body was rent with the upheavals of his grief.

“No, no, no.... I want Violetta! I want Violetta!” he cried.

At that stupid childishness Rosa could not refrain from smiling. She gave assistance by stroking the bald head of Don Giovanni and murmuring words of consolation.

“I will find Violetta for you; I will find her.... So! be quiet! Do not weep any more, Don Giovannino. The people passing can hear. Don’t worry about it, now.”

Don Giovanni, little by little, under the friendly caress, curbed his tears and wiped his eyes on her apron.

“Oh! oh! what a thing to happen!” he exclaimed, after having remained for a moment with his glance fixed on the zinc kettle, where the water glittered now under a sunbeam. “Oh! oh! what luck! Oh!”

He took his head between his hands and swung it back and forth two or three times, as do imprisoned monkeys.

“Now go, Don Giovanino, go!” Rosa Cantana said, taking him gently by the arm and drawing him along.

In the little room the perfume seemed to increase. Innumerable flies buzzed around a cup where remained the residue of some coffee. The reflection of the water trembled on the walls like a subtle net of gold.

“Leave everything just so!” pleaded Don Giovanni of the woman, in a voice broken by badly suppressed sobs. He descended the stairs, shaking his head over his fate. His eyes were swollen and red, bulging from their sockets like those of a mongrel dog.

His round body and prominent stomach overweighted his two slightly inverted legs. Around his bald skull ran a crown of long curling hair that seemed not to take root in the scalp but in the shoulders, from which it climbed upward toward the nape of the neck and the temples. He had the habit of replacing from time to time with his bejewelled hands, some disarranged tuft; the jewels, precious and gaudy, sparkled even on his thumb, and a cornelian button as large as a strawberry fastened the bosom of his shirt over the centre of his chest.

When he reached the broad daylight of the square, he experienced anew that unconquerable confusion. Several cobblers were working near by and eating figs. A caged blackbird was whistling the hymn of Garibaldi, continuously, always recommencing at the beginning with painful persistency.

“At your service, Don Giovanni!” called Don Domenico Oliva, as he passed, and he removed his hat with an affable Neapolitan cordiality. Stirred with curiosity by the strange expression of the Signor, he repassed him in a short time and resaluted him with greater liberality of gesture and affability. He was a man of very long body and very short legs; the habitual expression of his mouth was involuntarily shaped for derision. The people of Pescara called him “Culinterra.”

“At your service!” he repeated.

Don Giovanni, in whom a venomous wrath was beginning to ferment which the laughter of the fig-eaters and the trills of the blackbird irritated, at his second salute turned his back fiercely and moved away, fully persuaded that those salutes were meant for taunts.

Don Domenico, astonished, followed him with these words:

“But, Don Giovà! ... are you angry ... but....”

Don Giovanni did not listen. He walked on with quick steps toward his home. The fruit-sellers and the blacksmiths along the road gazed and could not understand the strange behaviour of these two men, breathless and dripping with perspiration under the noonday sun.

Having arrived at his door, Don Giovanni, scarcely stopping to knock, turned like a serpent, yellow and green with rage, and cried:

“Don Domè, oh Don Domè, I will hit you!” With this threat, he entered his house and closed the door violently behind him.

Don Domenico, dumbfounded, stood for a time speechless. Then he retraced his steps, wondering what could account for this behaviour, when Matteo Verdura, one of the fig-eaters, called:

“Come here! Come here! I have a great bit of news to tell you.”

“What news?” asked the man of the long spine, as he approached.

“Don’t you know about it?”

“About what?”

“Ah! Ah! Then you haven’t heard yet?”

“Heard what?”

Verdura fell to laughing and the other cobblers imitated him. Spontaneously all of them shook with the same rasping and inharmonious mirth, differing only with the personality of each man.

“Buy three cents’ worth of figs and I will tell you.”

Don Domenico, who was niggardly, hesitated slightly, but curiosity conquered him.

“Very well, here it is.”

Verdura called a woman and had her heap up the fruit on a plate. Then he said:

“That signora who lived up there, Donna Violetta, do you remember...? That one of the theatre, do you remember...?”

“Well?”

“She has made off this morning. Crash!”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed, Don Domè.”

“Ah, now I understand!” exclaimed Don Domenico, who was a subtle man and cruelly malicious.

Then, as he wished to revenge himself for the offence given him by Don Giovanni and also to make up for the three cents expended for the news, he went immediately to the casino in order to divulge the secret and to enlarge upon it.

The “casino,” a kind of café, stood immersed in shadow, and up from its tables sprinkled with water, arose a singular odour of dust and musk. There snored Doctor Punzoni, relaxed upon a chair, with his arms dangling. The Baron Cappa, an old soul, full of affection for lame dogs and tender girls, nodded discreetly over a newspaper. Don Ferdinando Giordano moved little flags over a card representing the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian war. Don Settimio de Marinis appraised with Doctor Fiocca the works of Pietro Mettastasio, not without many vocal explosions and a certain flowery eloquency in the use of poetical expressions. The notary Gaiulli, not knowing with whom to play, shuffled the cards of his game alone, and laid them out in a row on the table. Don Paolo Seccia sauntered around the billiard table with steps calculated to assist the digestion.

Don Domenico Oliva entered with so much vehemence, that all turned toward him except Doctor Panzoni, who still remained in the embrace of slumber.

“Have you heard? Have you heard?”

Don Domenico was so anxious to tell the news, and so breathless, that at first he stuttered without making himself understood. All of these gentlemen around him hung upon his words, anticipating with delight any unusual occurrence that might enliven their noonday chatter.

Don Paolo Seccia, who was slightly deaf in one ear, said impatiently, “But have they tied your tongue, Don Domè?”

Don Domenico recommenced his story at the beginning, with more calmness and clearness. He told everything; enlarged on the rage of Don Giovanni Ussorio; added fantastic details; grew intoxicated with his own words as he went on.

“Now do you see? Now do you see?”

Doctor Panzoni, at the noise, opened his eyelids, rolling his huge pupils still dull with sleep and still blowing through the monstrous hairs of his nose, said or rather snorted nasally:

“What has happened? What has happened?”

And with much effort, bearing down on his walking stick, he raised himself very slowly, and joined the gathering in order to hear.

The Baron Cappa now narrated, with much saliva in his mouth, a well-nourished story apropos of Violetta Kutufa. From the pupils of the eyes of his intent listeners gleams flashed in turn. The greenish eyes of Don Palo Seccia scintillated as if bathed in some exhilarating moisture. At last the laughter burst out.

But Doctor Panzoni, though standing, had taken refuge again in slumber; since for him sleep, irresistible as a disease, always had its seat within his own nostrils.

He remained with his snores, alone in the centre of the room, his head upon his breast, while the others scattered over the entire district to carry the news from family to family.

And the news, thus divulged, caused an uproar in Pescara. Toward evening, with a fresh breeze from the sea and a crescent moon, everybody frequented the streets and squares. The hum of voices was infinite. The name of Violetta Kutufa was at every tongue’s end. Don Giovanni Ussorio was not to be seen.

II

Violetta Kutufa had come to Pescara in the month of January, at the time of the Carnival, with a company of singers. She spoke of being a Greek from the Archipelago, of having sung in a theatre at Corfu in the presence of the Greek king, and of having made mad with love an English admiral. She was a woman of plump figure and very white skin. Her arms were unusually round and full of small dimples that became pink with every change of motion; and these little dimples, together with her rings and all of those other graces suitable for a youthful person, helped to make her fleshiness singularly pleasing, fresh and tantalising. The features of her face were slightly vulgar, the eyes tan colour, full of slothfulness; her lips large and flat as if crushed. Her nose did not suggest Greek origin; it was short, rather straight, and with large inflated nostrils; her black hair was luxuriant. She spoke with a soft accent, hesitating at each word, smiling almost constantly. Her voice often became unexpectedly harsh.

When her company arrived, the Pescaresi were frantic with expectation. The foreign singers were lauded everywhere, for their gestures, their gravity of movement, their costumes, and for every other accomplishment. But the person upon whom all attention centred was Violetta Kutufa.

She wore a kind of dark bolero bordered with fur and held together in front with gilt aiglettes; on her head was a species of toque, all fur, and worn a little to one side. She walked about alone, stepping briskly, entered the shops, treated the shop-keepers with a certain disdain, complained of the mediocrity of their wares, left without making a purchase, hummed with indifference.

Everywhere, in the squares, on all of the walls large hand-bills announced the performance of “The Countess of Amalfi.” The name of Violetta Kutufa was resplendent in vermilion letters. The souls of the Pescaresi kindled. At length the long looked-for evening arrived.

The theatre was in a room of the old military hospital, at the edge of the town near the sea. The room was low, narrow, and as long as a corridor; the stage, of wood with painted scenery, arose a few hands’ breadths above the floor; along the side walls was the gallery, consisting of boards over saw-horses covered with tricoloured flags and decorated with festoons. The curtain, a masterpiece of Cucuzzitó, son of Cucuzzitó, depicted tragedy, comedy and music, interwoven, like the three Graces, and flitting over a bridge under which passed the blue stream of Pescara. The chairs for the theatre, taken from the churches, occupied half of the pit. The benches, taken from the schools, occupied the remaining space.

Toward seven in the evening, the village band started its music on the square, played until it had made the circuit of the town and at length stopped in front of the theatre. The resounding march inspired the souls of passers-by. The women curbed their impatience within the folds of their beautiful silk garments. The room filled up rapidly.

The gallery was radiant with a sparkling aureole of married and unmarried women. Teodolinda Pomarici, a sentimental, lymphatic elocutionist, sat near Fermina Memura, called “The Masculine.” The Fusilli girls, arrived from Castellamare, tall maidens with very black eyes, all clothed in a uniform, pink material, with hair braided down their backs, laughed loudly and gesticulated. Emilia d’Annunzio used her beautiful lion-like eyes, with an air of infinite fatigue. Marianina Cortese made signs with her fan to Donna Rachele Profeta who sat in front of her. Donna Rachele Bucci argued with Donna Rachele Carabba on the subjects of speaking tables and spiritualism. The school-mistresses Del Gado, both clothed in changeable silk with mantillas of most antique fashion, and with diverse coiffures glittering with brass spangles, remained silent, compunctious, almost stunned by the novelty of this experience, almost repentant for having come to so profane a spectacle. Costanza Lesbu coughed continuously, shivering under her red shawl, very pale, very blond and very thin.

In the foremost chairs of the pit sat the wealthiest citizens. Don Giovanni Ussorio was most prominent because of his well-groomed appearance, his splendid black and white checkered trousers, his coat of shining wool, his quantity of false jewelry on fingers and shirt-front. Don Antonio Brattella, a member of the Areopagus of Marseilles, a man exhaling importance from every pore and especially from the lobe of his left ear, which was as thick as a green apricot, recited in a loud voice the lyric drama of Giovanni Peruzzini, and his words as they fell from his lips acquired a certain Ciceronian resonance. The auditors, lolling in their chairs, stirred with more or less impatience. Dr. Panzoni wrestled all to no purpose with the wiles of sleep, and from time to time made a noise that blended with the “la” of the tuning instruments.

“Pss! psss! pssss!”

The silence in the theatre grew profound. At the lifting of the curtain the stage was empty. The sound of a Violoncello came from the wings. Tilde appeared and sang. Afterwards Sertorio came out and sang. After him, a crowd of supernumeraries and friends, entered and intoned a song. After them, Tilde drew toward a window and sang:

“Oh how tedious the hours

To the desirous one...!”

In the audience a slight movement was perceptible, since all felt a love duet to be imminent. Tilde, in truth, was a first soprano, none too young; she wore a blue costume, had a blond wig that insufficiently covered her head, and her face, whitened with powder, resembled a raw cutlet besprinkled with flour and partially hidden behind a hempen wig.

Egidio came on. He was the young tenor. As he had a chest singularly hollow and legs slightly curved, he resembled a double-handed spoon upon which hung a calf’s head, scraped and polished like those which one sees at times over the butcher-shops. He began:

“Tilde! thy lips are mute,

Thy lowered glances dismay me,

Tell me, why you delay me?

Why do I see thy hand now

A-tremble? Why should that be?”

And Tilde, with great force of sentiment, replied:

“At such a solemn moment, how

Can you ask why of me?”

The duet increased in tenderness. The melody of the cavalier Petrella delighted the ears of the audience. All of the women leaned intently over the rails of the gallery and their faces, throbbing in the green reflection of the flags, were pallid.

“Like a journey from paradise

Death will appear to us.”

Tilde appeared; and now entered, singing, the Duke Carnioli, who was a man fat, fierce, and long haired enough, to be suited to the part of baritone. He sang with many flourishes, running over the syllables, sometimes moreover boldly suppressing.

“Dost thou not know the conjugal chain

Is like lead on the feet?”

But, when in the song, he mentioned at length the Countess of Amalfi, a long applause broke from the audience. The Countess was desired, demanded.

Don Giovanni Ussorio asked of Don Antonio Brattella:

“When is she coming?”

Don Antonio, in a lofty tone, replied:

“Oh! Dio mio, Don Giovà! Don’t you know? In the second act! In the second act!”

The speech of Sertorio was listened to with half-impatience. The curtain fell in the midst of weak applause. Thus began the triumphs of Violetta Kutufa. A prolonged murmur ran through the pit, through the gallery, and increased when the audience heard the blows of the scene-shifters’ hammers behind the curtain. That invisible hustling increased their expectation.

When the curtain went up a kind of spell held the audience in its grip. The scenic effect was marvellous. Three illuminated arches stretched themselves in perspective, and the middle one bordered a fantastic garden.

Several pages were dispersed here and there, and were bowing. The Countess of Amalfi, clothed in red velvet, with her regal train, her arms and shoulders bare, her face ruddy, entered with agitated step and sang:

“It was an evening of ravishment, which still

Fills my soul....”

Her voice was uneven, sometimes twanging, but always powerful and penetrating. It produced on the audience a singular effect after the whine of Tilde. Immediately the audience was divided into two factions; the women were for Tilde, the men for Leonora.

“He who resists my charms

Has not easy matter...!”

Leonora possessed in her personality, in her gestures, her movements, a sauciness that intoxicated and kindled those unmarried men who were accustomed to the flabby Venuses of the lanes of Sant’ Agostino, and to those husbands who were wearied with conjugal monotony.

All gazed at the singer’s every motion, at her large white shoulders, where, with the movements of her round arms, two dimples tried to smile.

At the end of her solo, applause broke forth with a crash. Later, the swooning of the Countess, her dissimulation before the Duke Carnioli (the leader of the duet), the whole scene aroused applause. The heat in the room had become intense; in the galleries fans fluttered confusedly, and among the fans the women’s faces appeared and disappeared.

When the Countess leaned against a column in an attitude of sentimental contemplation, illuminated by the calcium light, and Egidio sang his gentle love song, Don Antonio Brattella called loudly, “She is great!”

Don Giovanni Ussorio, with a sudden impulse, fell to clapping his hands alone. The others shouted at him to be silent, as they wished to hear. Don Giovanni became confused.

“All is for love, everything speaks:

The moon, the zephyrs, the stars, the sea....”

The heads of the listeners swayed with the rhythm of this melody of the Petrella style, even though the voice of Egidio was indifferent; and even though the light was glaring and yellowish their eyes drank in the scene. But when, after this last contrast of passion and seduction, the Countess of Amalfi, walking toward the garden, took up the melody alone, the melody that still vibrated in the minds of all, the delight of the audience had risen to such a height that many raised their heads and inclined them slightly backward as if to trill together with the siren, who was now concealed among the flowers. She sang:

“The bark is now ready ... ah, come beloved!

Is not Love calling ... to live is to love?”

At this climax, Violetta Kutufa made a complete conquest of Don Giovanni Ussorio, who beside himself, seized with a species of passionate, musical madness, clamoured continuously:

“Brava! Brava! Brava!”

Don Paolo Seccia called loudly:

“Oh, see here! see here! Ussorio has gone mad for her!”

All the women gazed at Ussorio, amazed and confused. The school-mistresses Del Gado shook their rosaries under their mantillas. Teodolinda Pomarici remained ecstatic. Only the Fasilli girls, in their red paint, preserved their vivacity, and chattered, shaking their serpentine braids with every movement.

In the third act, neither the dying sighs of Tilde, whom the women defended, nor the rebuffs of Sertorio and Carnioli, nor the songs of the chorus, nor the monologue of the melancholy Egidio, nor the joyfulness of the dames and cavaliers, held any power to distract the public from the preceding voluptuousness.

“Leonora! Leonora! Leonora!” they cried.

Leonora reappeared on the arm of the Count of Lara and descended from a pavilion. Thus she reached the very culmination of her triumph.

She wore now a violet gown, trimmed with silver ribbons and enormous clasps. She turned to the pit, while with her foot she gave a quick, backward stroke to her train, and exposed in the act her instep.

Then, mingling with her words, a thousand charms and a thousand affectations, she sang half-jestingly,

“I am the butterfly that sports within the flowers....”

The public grew almost delirious at this well-known song.

The Countess of Amalfi, on feeling mount up to her the ardent admiration of the men, became intoxicated, multiplied her seductive gestures, and raised her voice to the highest altitude of which she was capable. Her fleshly throat, uncovered, marked with the necklace of Venus, shook with trills.

“I, the bee, who alone on the honey is nourished,

Am inebriate under the blue of the sky....”

Don Giovanni Ussorio stared with so much intensity, that his eyes seemed to start from their sockets. The Baron Cappa was equally enchanted. Don Antonio Brattella, a member of the Areopagus of Marseilles, swelled and swelled, until at length burst fro-m him the exclamation:

“Colossal!”

III

Thus, Violetta Kutufa made a conquest of Pescara. For more than a month performances of the opera of the Cavalier Petrella, continued with ever increasing popularity. The theatre was always full, even packed. Applause for Leonora broke out furiously at the end of every song. A singular phenomenon occurred; the entire population of Pescara seemed seized with a species of musical mania; every Pescarenican soul became inclosed in the magic circle of one single melody, that of the butterfly that sports among the flowers.

In every corner, at every hour, in every way, in every possible variation, on every instrument, with an astounding persistency, that melody was repeated; and the person of Violetta Kutufa became the symbol of those musical strains, just as—God pardon the comparison—the harmony of the organ suggests the soul of paradise.

The musical and lyrical comprehension, which in the southern people is instinctive, expanded at this time without limit. The street gamins whistled everywhere; all the amateur musicians put forth their efforts, Donna Lisitta Menuma played the tune on the harpsichord from dawn until dusk, Don Antonio Brattella played it on the flute, Don Domenico Quaquino, on the clarionette, Don Giacomo Palusci, the priest, on an old rococo spinet, Don Vincenzio Rapagneta on his violoncello, Don Vincenzio Ranieri on the trumpet, Don Nicola d’Annunzio, on his violin. From the towers of Sant’ Agostino to the Arsenal, and from Pescheria to Dogana the multifold sounds mingled together and became a discord. In the early hours of the afternoon the district had the appearance of some large hospital for incurable madness. Even the grinders sharpening knives on their wheels tried to maintain a rhythm in the shriek of the metal and the whetstone.

As it was the time of the carnival, a public festival was given in the theatre. Shrove Thursday, at ten in the evening, the room blazed with wax-candles, smelt strongly of myrtle and glittered with mirrors. The masked revellers entered in crowds. Punchinellos predominated. From a platform enveloped in green draperies, marked with constellations of stars of silver paper, the orchestra began to play and Don Giovanni Ussorio entered.

He was dressed like a grandee of Spain, and had the appearance of a very fat Count of Lara. A blue cap with a long, white plume covered his baldness, a short coat of red velvet garnished with gold rippled over his shoulders. This costume accentuated the prominence of his stomach and the skinniness of his legs. His locks, shining with cosmetic oils, resembled an artificial fringe bound around his cap, and they were blacker than usual.

An impertinent Punchinello, on passing him, cried in a disguised voice:

“How funny!”

He made a gesture of horror, so clownish, at this metamorphosis of “Don Giovanni,” that much laughter burst forth from everyone in the vicinity. La Cicarina, all red paint under the black hood of her domino, like a beautiful flower of the flesh, laughed sonorously, while she tripped with two ragged harlequins.

Don Giovanni, filled with anger, lost himself in the crowd and sought Violetta Kutufa. The sarcasms of the other revellers pursued and wounded him. Suddenly he encountered another grandee of Spain, another count of Lara. He recognised Don Antonio Brattella and, at this, received a thrust in the heart. Already, between these two men, rivalry had broken loose.

“How is the medlar?” Don Donato Brandimarte screamed venomously, alluding to the fleshy protuberance that the member of the Areopagus of Marseilles had on his left ear. Don Giovanni took a fierce pleasure in this insult.

The rivals met face to face, scanned each other from head to foot, and kept their respective stations, the one always slightly withdrawn from the other, as they wandered through the crowd.

At eleven, an agitated flutter passed over the crowd. Violetta Kutufa entered. She was dressed in Mephistophelian costume, in a black domino with long scarlet hood, and with a scarlet mask over her face. The round, swan-like chin, the thick red mouth, shone through her thin veil. The eyes, lengthened and rendered slightly oblique because of the mask, seemed to smile.

All instantaneously recognised her and almost all made way for her; Don Antonio Brattella advanced caressingly on one side. On the other came Don Giovanni; Violetta Kutufa made a hasty survey of the rings that adorned the fingers of the latter, then took the arm of Brattella.

She laughed and walked with a certain sprightly undulation of the hips. Brattella, while talking to her in his customary, silly, vainglorious manner, called her “Contessa,” and interspersed their conversation with the lyrical verses of Giovanni Peruzzini.

She laughed and leaned toward him, and pressed his arm suggestively, since the weaknesses of this ugly, vain man amused her. At a certain point, Brattella, when repeating the words of the Count of Lara in the melodrama of Petrella, said or rather sang submissively:

“Shall I then hope?”

Violetta Kutufa answered in the words of Leonora:

“Who forbids you...? Good-bye.”

Then, seeing Don Giovanni not far away, she detached herself from this bewitching chevalier, and fastened upon the other, who already for some time had pursued with eyes full of envy and dislike, the windings of this couple through the crowd of dancers.

Don Giovanni trembled like a youth under the glance of his first sweetheart. Then, seized with a superabundant pride, he drew the opera singer into the dance. He whirled breathlessly around, with his nose against the woman’s chest, his cloak floating out behind, his plume fluttering to the breeze, streams of perspiration mixed with cosmetic oils filtering down his temples.

Exhausted, he stopped at length. He reeled with giddiness. Two hands supported him and a sneering voice whispered in his ear, “Don Giovà, stop and recover your breath for a minute!”

The voice was that of Brattella, who in turn drew the fair lady into the dance. He danced, holding his left arm arched over his hips, beating time with his feet, endeavouring to appear as light as a feather, with motions meant to be gracious, but instead so idiotic, and with grimaces so monkey-like, that everywhere the laughter and mockery of the Punchinellos began to pelt down upon him.

“Pay a cent to see it, gentlemen!”

“Here is the bear of Poland that dances like a Christian! Gaze on him, gentlemen!”

“Have a medlar? Have a medlar?”

“Oh, see! See! An orangoutang!”

Don Antonio Brattella controlled himself with much dignity, still continuing his dance. Other couples wheeled around him.

The room was filled with all kinds of people, and in the midst of the confusion the candles burned on, with their reddish flames lighting up the festoons of immortelles. All of this fluttering reflected itself in the mirrors.

La Ciccarina, the daughter of Montagna, the daughter of Suriano, the sisters Montarano, appeared and disappeared, while enlivening the crowd with the beams of their fresh country loveliness. Donna Teodolinda Pomarici, tall and thin, clothed in blue satin, like a madonna, permitted herself to be borne about in a state of transport as her hair, loosened from its bands, waved upon her shoulders. Costanzella Coppe, the most agile and indefatigable of the dancers, and the palest, flew from one extremity of the room to the other in a flash; Amalia Solofra, with hair almost aflame in colour, clothed like a rustic, her audacity almost unequalled, had her silk waist supported by a single band that outlined the connecting point of her arm; and during the dance, at intervals, one could see dark stains under her armpits. Amalia Gagliano, a beautiful, blue-eyed creature, in the costume of a sorceress, resembled an empty coffin walking vertically. A species of intoxication held sway over all these girls. They were fermenting in the warm, dense air, like adulterated wine. The laurel and the immortelles gave out a singular odour, almost ecclesiastical.

The music ceased, now all mounted the stairs leading to the refreshment-room. Don Giovanni Ussorio came to invite Violetta to the banquet. Brattella, to show that he had reached a state of close intimacy with the opera-singer, leaned toward her and whispered something in her ear, and then fell to laughing about it. Don Giovanni no longer heeded his rival.

“Come, Contessa,” he said, with much ceremony, as he offered his arm.

Violetta accepted. Both mounted the stairs slowly with Don Antonio in the rear.

“I am in love with you!” Don Giovanni hazarded, trying to instil into his voice that note of passion, rendered familiar to him by the principal lover of a dramatic company of Chieti.

Violetta Kutufa did not answer. She was amusing herself by watching the concourse of people near the booth of Andreuccio, who was distributing refreshments, while shouting the prices in a loud voice as if at a country-fair. Andreuccio had an enormous head with polished top, a nose that curved wondrously over the projection of his lower lip; he resembled one of those large paper lanterns in the shape of a human head. The revellers ate and drank with a bestial greediness, scattering on their clothes crumbs of sweet pastry and drops of liquor. On seeing Don Giovanni, Andreuccio cried, “Signor, at your service.”

Don Giovanni had much wealth, and was a widower without blood relations; for which reasons everybody was desirous to be of service to him and to flatter him.

“A little supper,” he answered. “And take care...!” He made an expressive sign to indicate that the thing must be excellent and rare.

Violetta Kutufa sat down, and with a languid effort removed her mask from her face and opened her domino a little. Her face, surrounded by the scarlet hood, and animated with warmth, seemed even more saucy. Through the opening of the domino one saw a species of pink tights that gave a suggestion of living flesh.

“Your health!” exclaimed Don Pompeo Nervi, lingering before the well-furnished table, and seating himself at length, allured by a plate of juicy lobsters.

Then Don Tito de Sieri arrived and took a place without ceremony; also Don Giustino Franco, together with Don Pasquale Virgilio and Don Federico Sicoli appeared. The group of guests at the table continued to swell. After much tortuous tracing and retracing of his steps, even Don Antonio Brattella came finally. These were, for the most part, habitual guests of Don Giovanni; they formed about him a kind of adulatory court, gave their votes to him in the town elections, laughed at every witticism of his, and called him by way of nickname, “The Director.” Don Giovanni introduced them all to Violetta Kutufa. These parasites set themselves to eating with their voracious mouths bent over their plates.

Every word, every sentence of Don Antonio Brattella was listened to in hostile silence. Every word, every sentence of Don Giovanni, was recognised with complacent smiles and nods of the head. Don Giovanni triumphed in the centre of his court. Violetta Kutufa treated him with affability, now that she felt the force of his gold; and now, entirely free from her hood, with her locks slightly dishevelled on forehead and neck, she indulged in her usual playfulness, somewhat noisy and childish. Around them the crowd moved restlessly.

In the centre of it, three or four harlequins walked on the pavement with their hands and feet, and rolled like great beetles. Amalia Solofra, standing upon a chair, with her long arms bare to the elbows, shook a tambourine. Around her a couple hopped in rustic fashion, giving out short cries, while a group of youths stood looking on with eager eyes. At intervals, from the lower room ascended the voice of Don Ferdinando Giordano, who was ordering the quadrille with great bravado.

“Balance! Forward and back! Swing!”

Little by little Violetta Kutufa’s table became full to overflowing. Don Nereo Pica, Don Sebastiano Pica, Don Grisostomo Troilo and others of this Ussorian court arrived; even to Don Cirillo d’Amelio, Don Camillo d’Angelo and Don Rocco Mattace.

Many strangers stood about with stupid expressions, and watched them eat. Women were envious. From time to time a burst of rough laughter arose from the table, and from time to time corks popped and the foam of wine overflowed.

Don Giovanni took pleasure in splashing his guests, especially the bald ones, in order to make Violetta laugh. The parasites raised their flushed faces, and, still eating, smiled at their “Director” from under the foamy rain. But Don Antonio Brattella, having taken offence, made as if to go. All of the feasters opposite him gave a low cry like a bark.

Violetta called, “Stay.” Don Antonio remained. After this he gave a toast rhyming in quintains. Don Federico Sicoli, half intoxicated, gave a toast likewise in honour of Violetta and of Don Giovanni, in which he went so far as to speak of “divine shape” and “jolly times.” He declaimed in a loud voice. He was a man long, thin and greenish in colour. He lived by composing verses of Saints’ days and laudations for all ecclesiastical festivals. Now, in the midst of his drunkenness, the rhymes fell from his lips without order, old rhymes and new ones. At a certain point, no longer able to balance on his legs, he bent like a candle softened by heat and was silent.

Violetta Kutufa was overcome with laughter. The crowd jammed around the table as if at a spectacle.

“Let us go,” Violetta said at this moment, putting on her mask and hood.

Don Giovanni, at the culmination of his amorous enthusiasm, all red and perspiring, took her arm. The parasites drank the last drop and then arose confusedly behind the couple.

IV

A few days after, Violetta Kutufa was inhabiting an apartment in one of Don Giovanni’s houses on the town square, and much hearsay floated through Pescara. The company of singers departed from Brindisi without the Countess of Amalfi. In the solemn, quiet Lenten days, the Pescaresi took a modest delight in gossip and calumny. Every day a new tale made the circuit of the city, and every day a new creation arose from the popular imagination.

Violetta Kutufa’s house was in the neighbourhood of Sant’ Agostino, opposite the Brina palace and adjoining the palace of Memma. Every evening the windows were illuminated and the curious assembled beneath them.

Violetta received visitors in a room tapestried with French fabrics on which were depicted in French style various mythological subjects. Two round-bodied vases of the seventeenth century occupied the two sides of the chimney-piece. A yellow sofa extended along the opposite wall between two curtains of similar material. On the chimney-piece stood a plaster Venus and a small Venus di Medici between two gilt candelabra. On the shelves rested various porcelain vases, a bunch of artificial flowers under a crystal globe, a basket of wax fruit, a Swiss cottage, a block of alum, several sea-shells and a cocoanut.

At first her guests had been reluctant, through a sense of modesty, to mount the stairs of the opera singer. Later, little by little, they had overcome all hesitation. Even the most serious men made from time to time their appearance in the salon of Violetta Kutufa; even men of family; and they went there almost with trepidation, with furtive delight, as if they were about to commit a slight crime against their wives, as if they were about to enter a place of soothing perdition and sin. They united in twos and threes, formed alliances for greater security and justification, laughed among themselves and nudged one another in turn for encouragement. Then the stream of light from the windows, the strains from the piano, the song of the Countess of Amalfi, the voices and applause of her guests excited them. They were seized with a sudden enthusiasm, threw out their chests, held up their heads with youthful pride and mounted resolutely, deciding that after all one had to taste of life and cull opportunities for enjoyment.

But Violetta’s receptions had an air of great propriety, were almost formal. She welcomed the new arrivals with courtesy and offered them syrups in water and cordials. The newcomers remained slightly astonished, did not know quite how to behave, where to sit, what to say. The conversations turned upon the weather, on political news, on the substance of the Lenten sermons, on other matter-of-fact and tedious topics.

Don Giuseppe Postiglioni spoke of the pretensions of the Prussian Prince Hohenzollern to the throne of Spain; Don Antonio Brattella delighted in discoursing on the immortality of the soul and other inspiring matters. The doctrine of Brattella was stupendous. He spoke slowly and emphatically, from time to time, pronouncing a difficult word rapidly and eating up the syllables. To quote an authentic report, one evening, on taking a wand and bending it, he said: “Oh, how fleible!” for flexible; another evening, pointing to his plate and making excuses for not being able to play the flute, he vouchsafed: “My entire p-l-ate is inflamed!” and still another evening, on indicating the shape of a vase, he said that in order to make children take medicine, it was necessary to scatter with some sweet substance the origin of the glass.

At intervals Don Paolo Seccia, incredulous soul, on hearing singular matters recounted, jumped up with: “But Don Antò, what do you mean to say?”