“He might be practising a solfeggio,” I suggested, “which you could sing for him.” But this was not treating the buffo’s voice with proper respect. “Or put a piece of music-paper in his hand and make him a composer.”
“Bravo! But what is written on the music-paper?”
I said: “Stornelli Montagnoli.”
He began to hum meditatively:
“No,” he said, “that won’t do. In the first place it is not yet known in Palermo, and when it is, it will be so popular that no one in particular will think of saving it.”
“Very well then,” I replied, “make it that he has just discovered an entirely new resolution of the dominant seventh and has written it down before he forgets it.”
“All right. And this is the painter; he has his easel and a picture which he has only just begun; that is more precious to him than all the pictures he has finished because it is so full of hope.”
“Bravo, Buffo. And where is the miser?”
“Oh Caspita!” he exclaimed. “How clever you are! Of course there must be a miser. We will make him at once.”