"Salvator!" old Capuzzi began; "Salvator Rosa! I have looked upon you as my worst enemy, but I have always held your art in highest honour; and now I love you as the most valued of my friends, and I venture to beg you to accept me as such."
"Say, my worthy Signor Pasquale," answered Salvator, "in what I can be of service to you, and be assured beforehand that I will employ all my powers to fulfil your desires."
There dawned in Capuzzi's face once more that sugary smile which had vanished since Marianna's departure. He took Salvator's hand, and whispered gently: "My dear Signor Salvator, you can do anything with the good Antonio. Beg him, in my name, to allow me to spend the brief remainder of my days with him and my dear daughter Marianna, and to accept from me the fortune which she inherits from her mother, to which I mean to add a liberal marriage-portion. And then, too, he mustn't look askew if I now and then kiss the lovely child's little white hand; and--at all events on Sundays when I go to mass--he must dress my moustache for me; a thing which nobody in all the world can do as he can."
Salvator had difficulty in restraining his laughter; but before he could make answer, Antonio and Marianna, embracing the old man, assured him that they would not consider the reconciliation complete, or feel thoroughly happy, until he took his place by their hearth as a beloved father, never to leave them more. Antonio added that he would dress Capuzzi's moustachios not only on Sundays, but every day of the week, in the daintiest manner. And now the old man was all joy and happiness. Meanwhile a splendid supper had been served, and to this they all sate down, in the happiest mood of mind.
In taking my leave of you, dear reader, I wish with all my heart that the happiness which has now fallen to the lot of Salvator and all his friends, may have glowed very brightly in your own breast, whilst you have been reading the story of the marvellous Signor Formica.
"Now," began Lothair, when Ottmar had ended, "since our friend has been fair and honourable enough to admit from the outset the lack of vigour--the weakness of knee, so to speak, of his production, which it has pleased him to call a 'Novella,' this appeal to our considerateness does, certainly, draw the sting out of our criticisms, which were formed up, in complete steel, to attack him. He bares his bosom to the partizan-pike, and therefore, as magnanimous adversaries, we withhold our thrust, and are bound to have mercy."
"More than that," said Cyprian, "to console his pain, we feel ourselves permitted to bestow a certain limited amount of praise. For my part, I see a good deal in this work that is pleasant and Serapiontic. Capuzzi's broken leg, for instance, and its consequences, his mysterious serenade----"
"Which," interrupted Vincenz, "has all the more of the real Spanish, or the true Italian smack about it, just because it ends with a tremendous cudgelling. No proper Novella of the kind would be complete without the due amount of licking, and I prize it highly as, medically speaking, a specially powerful stimulant, always employed by the best writers. In Boccacio things hardly ever wind up without cudgelling; and where does it rain more blows or thrusts than in the Romance of all Romances, 'Don Quixote?' Cervantes himself considered it necessary to apologise to his readers about it. Now-a-days intellectual ladies will have none of such matters in connection with the mental 'teas' (which they enjoy along with tea for the body); the honoured hide of a favourite poet--if he would retain his footing at 'teas,' and in pocket-books--must, at highest, be blackened by a tap or so on the nose, or the least little box on an ear. But what of tea? What of cultivated ladies? Behold in me, oh, Ottmar, your champion in complete armour, and cudgel soundly in all the novels you may be thinking of writing. I praise you for the cudgelling's sake."
"And I," said Theodore, "for the delightful trio which Capuzzi, the Pyramid-doctor, and the somewhat shudder-creating little abortion, Pitichinaccio, form; and, moreover, for the wonderful way in which Salvator Rosa--who never appears as the hero of the tale, but always as an auxiliary--conforms to his character as it is described, and also as it appears in his own works."
"Ottmar," said Sylvester, "has held chiefly to the adventurous and enterprising side of his character, and given us less of what was grave and gloomy in him. A propos of this, I think of the famous sonnet in which, allegorising on his own name--Salvator--he utters his deep indignation at his enemies and persecutors who accused him of plundering from older writers in his poetry, which, indeed, is all ruggedness, and deficient in interior connectedness."