walls with the intention of damaging the enemy; but the Turkish Emperors had made a study of the art of war and taught their men how to hold their shields over their heads, and thus they warded off the chairs and tables and were able to creep along under cover, approach the city, climb up the walls and descend into the piazza. The first who entered went round to open the gates and let the rest in. As soon as they had recovered from their surprise at finding that the inhabitants had all escaped, they began to commit sacrileges. Balestrazzo, Emperor of Turgovia, occupied the principal church of Paris as a stable for his horses. Rainello, a nephew of the traitor Gano di Magonza, wishing to do a bravery, went into a church and cried with a loud voice:
“Take down that crucifix; it is only wood; if it had been a god I should not have denied the faith. Take it away. There is only one God and Mahomet is his prophet.”
With this he leapt on the altar, drew his sword, and was about to hew the crucifix into pieces when a thunderbolt struck him. As he was the first to lay hands upon the sacred images, so he was the first to be struck. But he recovered; he did not die of the thunderbolt; it was the will of heaven that he should live to be killed by Guido Santo.
It was a pity that I had to go to Calatafimi and could not stay for all this, but before I went I had the satisfaction of seeing Ettorina go mad. At first she was hardly more than slightly unhinged, yet she was mad enough to enter the enemy’s camp by night. The sentinel had just been awakened by the corporal, but she paid no more attention to them than they to her. Nor did she shrink from making consecutive fifths, or downright octaves, with Costanzo as she crossed the stage, going away to fetch a quantity of wood to light a fire because it was a chilly evening; but, as the buffo pointed out, she had a sufficient dramatic reason to justify the licence. Presently, like the laden Sicilian cart, she staggered back with her faggots and disappeared. In a few moments we saw the fitful glare from
the conflagration she had kindled dancing on the combustible pavilion which took up all the back of the scene. Various Turkish soldiers entered to investigate the cause of the unwonted light, but they did not return to report, she killed them all, one after the other; and this gave time which the buffo utilised by applying a match from below, and, while the pavilion blazed and the audience applauded, Ettorina in her burnished armour went as mad as Tilburina in her white satin till the curtain fell.
CHAPTER VI
THE ESCAPE FROM PARIS
Although I had to miss a great deal that it would have been interesting to see on the stage, I spent a couple of mornings with the buffo in his workshop helping to make the scene of the people escaping, which was perhaps even better than being among the audience later. I think he is most happy when he is holding up the mirror to nature and reproducing modern Palermitan life as it appears to him. He enjoyed the devils and the subterranean road, but the inhabitants of Paris in modern costume, each saving his most precious object and escaping with the Pope through the subterranean road to Montalbano, was a larger canvas and gave him more opportunities. As a creative artist he is in the fortunate position of being up to a certain point his own impresario, stage-manager and performer. Nevertheless he has to rely on the co-operation of his father and Gildo, and there is always the public to be considered, therefore it is possible that some of the things we made and contemplated in the workshop did not get so far as to be presented on the stage.
There was a sluggard carrying a mattress under each arm; and a drunkard carrying a bottle of wine, a real glass bottle that would catch the light and make an effect. Another man had on his back a table and was carrying a
plate, a knife, fork, spoon and napkin; he was a glutton. The masks Pasquino and Onofrio were making a comic escape and talking in dialect; Pasquino was carrying his wife Rosina on his shoulder and a pillow in his hand, and Onofrio was saving an article of crockery made at Caltagirone. And because the buffo was studying to become a singer he had made a musician:
“But I cannot show his voice,” he complained.