“Well, instead of feasting on a vulgar supper, I went to bed to feast on memories of the divine life of the opera and on hopes of living it over again on the next evening. Ah! how I worshiped the Signior Bercelloni! Ah! how I detested the Signiora Colona! Ah! how I aspired to be a famous prima donna! I felt capable of dying for Bercelloni, of choking Colona, and of running away from pap to become a prima donna. I was in the last stage of illusion, hallucination, mania! Don’t glower at me so, Britty! or I can’t go on. Ah! if our paps did but know, it is not always safe to take every one of us to such places!”
“Indeed, it is not!” exclaimed Britomarte, so earnestly, so bitterly, so regretfully, with so dark a shadow overhanging her face, that little Elfie paused and gazed at her in dismay, faltering:
“Why, Britty, what is the matter? Surely, you never——”
“No, no,” said Britomarte, recovering herself with an effort, “I was never at an opera. Go on. How did it end?”
“How did it end? As a Fourth of July rocket ends, of course. It streamed up from the earth a blazing meteor, aspiring to the heavens! It fell down to the ground a blackened stick, to be trodden under foot!”
“Ah!” sighed Erminie, in a voice full of sympathy.
Elfie laughed, and went on:
“But to leave the hifaluting and come down to the common. It was very late when I got up next morning, and pap was as late as I was. And when we sat down to the breakfast table we found a party sitting opposite to us who were as late as we were. I didn’t look at them. I was still in a dream, living in memories of the past evening and hopes of the coming one. In so deep a dream, that I didn’t know whether I was breakfasting off an omelette or stewed kid gloves, until pap stooped and whispered to me: ‘Daught., there’s Signior Adriano di Bercelloni sitting opposite to us.’ I woke from my dream and raised my eyes to see. Was it Bercelloni? I looked and looked again before I could be sure. Yes, it was he! But oh! my countrymen, what a change was there! How like, yet how unlike my gorgeous hero of the evening before! His head was bald! his face was bloated! his form was round! Ugh! His eyes were red! his nose was blue; his teeth were yellow—ugh! ugh! He had a great plate of macaroni and garlic before him, and a great spoon in his hand, with which he shoveled the mess down his throat, as a collier shovels coal into a cellar—faugh! Whatever he had done to himself to make him look so differently on the stage, I don’t know. But the sight of him au natural made me sick and cured me.”
“And so that is the end of the story?” inquired Alberta.
“No, not quite. On one side of him sat a swarthy, scrawny signiora, who was the wife of his ‘buzzum’. And on the other sat an equally swarthy and scrawny signorina, who was the lovely pledge of their wedded affections. And that’s not all either, Alba. That evening pap said, ‘Well, daught., shall we go to the opera to see the Signior Bercelloni play Fra Diavolo?’ I answered, ‘Thank you, pap, I had rather not.’ And so we went to church instead to hear the celebrated Rev. Mr.—What’s-his-name? Law! you know who I mean.”