So we selected an old man marionette who happened to
have nothing particular to do at the moment, and got a piece of sacking out of which we made a bag and filled it—not with gold—
“No,” said the buffo, “that must be one of the things the people do not see, they must imagine the gold.” Then we loaded the miser with his bag and added him to the crowd of fugitives.
And he had made a woman saving a mouse-trap; she was a suffragette. That was because he had read in the Giornale di Sicilia that in England a meeting of suffragettes had been dispersed by letting mice in among them. The buffo’s suffragette had argued thus:
“In all the world there are mice; Montalbano will be no exception. How do I know what sort of house I shall have there? It will probably be over-run with mice. If I take this trap with me, at least I shall be able to catch some of them.”
It turned out that she had to sleep on the floor in someone else’s house like a fugitive from Messina, and the mouse-trap came in very handy.
And he had made a chemist who was saving a medicine chest and a few instruments. The chemist had argued thus:
“In Montalbano there will be no order. Here in Paris the restaurants are well-managed and the food is good. How can I tell what sort of food they will give us there? Very likely we shall have to depend a great deal upon chance. I will take these instruments and medicine and earn money by curing those who will be sure to be upset by the badness of the food.”
And a man came weeping; his father had died the day before and there had not been time to bury the body, but it had been put into a coffin and the undertaker’s men were laughing because the son was rich and had promised to pay them extra for carrying the body to Montalbano and burying it there; but the son did not see they were laughing, he was in front to show them the way.
Two boys came along, each saving a marionette, one had