But the villagers do not really care for Ibsen. They let it go. On the feast of Epiphany, as a special treat, was given a poetic drama by D'Annunzio, La Fiaccola sotto il Moggio—The Light under the Bushel.
It is a foolish romantic play of no real significance. There are several murders and a good deal of artificial horror. But it is all a very nice and romantic piece of make-believe, like a charade.
So the audience loved it. After the performance of Ghosts I saw the barber, and he had the curious grey clayey look of an Italian who is cold and depressed. The sterile cold inertia, which the so-called passionate nations know so well, had settled on him, and he went obliterating himself in the street, as if he were cold, dead.
But after the D'Annunzio play he was like a man who has drunk sweet wine and is warm.
'Ah, bellissimo, bellissimo!' he said, in tones of intoxicated reverence, when he saw me.
'Better than I Spettri?' I said.
He half-raised his hands, as if to imply the fatuity of the question.
'Ah, but—' he said, 'it was D'Annunzio. The other....'
'That was Ibsen—a great Norwegian,' I said, 'famous all over the world.'
'But you know—D'Annunzio is a poet—oh, beautiful, beautiful!' There was no going beyond this 'bello—bellissimo'.