“Two days later, I entered a poor tavern, and sat down at a table. Opposite me was a short, strong-built young fellow, who was seated with his elbows leaning on the table, and who seemed to be asleep. They brought me a pot of beer and some bread and cheese, for which I paid a half-zwanziger. On this allowance I had money enough to last eight days. When the landlady spoke to the young man at the other side of the table he made no reply, and a little after, as he raised his head, I saw that he had been crying.
“‘You are hungry,’ I said to him, ‘and have no money to pay for your supper.’
“‘Fact!’ he answered, laconically.
“‘Very well,’ I replied, ‘where there’s enough for one, there’s enough for two. Help yourself.’
“Without answering a word, he drew a knife from his pocket and cut into my bread and cheese. When he had eaten in silence, he thanked me briefly, and with an appearance of sincerity, and I had the curiosity to ask him the cause of his distress. He told me his name—I forget what it was—but the name he was travelling under was Puffo. He was from Leghorn—a rather poor recommendation, at least in Italy, for persons of a certain class. In the opinion of the sailors all along the Mediterranean coast, to call a man a Livornese is almost equivalent to calling him a pirate. My friend probably would have justified the prejudice; he had been a sailor, and a little of a freebooter. At present he was a strolling mountebank.
“I listened to him without much interest, for he did not narrate well, and it is only the way in which they are told that gives any value to the stories of such adventurers; in substance they are all pretty much the same. However, when this man began to speak about his unprofitable theatre, I pricked up my ears and asked him what sort of representations he gave.
“‘Mon Dieu!’ he cried, ‘that’s the kind, and it’s the worst business I ever had anything to do with. The devil take the man who put it into my head!’
“As he spoke, he pulled a marionette from his bag, and threw it angrily on the table.
“An exclamation of surprise escaped me. This marionette, frightfully dirty and worn out, was my own handiwork. It was a burattino of my own make! Yes, indeed, it was my leading character, the chief of my company, my own witty and charming Stentarello, the ornament of all my performances in the towns of the Apennines, the darling of the pretty Genoese women, the child of my scissors and my fancy, the very pillar of my theatre.
“‘What!’ I cried, ‘you wretched fellow! You own Stentarello, and can’t make money with him?’