The dear people we were leaving are all of them so much more or less histrionic, that Pasquale’s occasionally fine gestures had never struck me as singular or exceptional.
‘Sì, Signore, son comico io,’ he went on, ‘I am an actor, and have played at Lucca, at Fiesole, at Pisa, yes and at Siena. Once I was in the same cast with the stupendous tragedian, Salvini.’
‘Yes, a great actor, indeed,’ I said. ‘I once saw him in an Italian version of our English drama Othello.’
He was in his early morning dress, wearing no coat nor jacket, and having in his turned-up white apron my boot-trees, which he was just about to pack. But he drew himself up with much dignity, and, with the one disengaged hand suiting the action to the word, he said:
‘I, too, have played the part of Otello.’ And, without more ado, he recited, in his sonorous language, the lines:
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars;
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
And the earnestness with which he recited that pathetic passage completely submerged the sense of humour that was beginning to rise in me.
As we entered Florence, so did we quit it, leisurely, and without the disenchanting scenes of a modern railway station. We were to drive across the Apennines to Bologna, and, as we reached the last flower-stall near the Gate that looks thitherward, Lamia expressed a wish for one more flower. It was a lovely rose, the only one on a plant that occupied among the others the place of honour.