not found a publisher for it yet, but if I would translate it into English and get it published in London, I could send him any profits that might accrue. I showed it to Peppino who swore he remembered something very like it in an Italian magazine and that the professor had had nothing to do with it beyond copying it. I translated it without rhymes, the professor not having gone to that expense. I have not offered the result to any English publisher, none of them would receive it as Peppino did when I showed it to him. He said I had performed a miracle, that I had converted a few lines of drivelling nonsense—just the sort of stuff that would attract the professor—into a masterpiece. But I am afraid the prestige of the English language may have blinded Peppino to any little defects, as it made him see more romance than I could find in the names of the English boats. This was my “masterpiece”:
FULL INSIDE.
The train is full; Ah me! the load of travellers!
The engine whistles; Ah me! the piercing shriek!
My heart is burdened; Ah me! the weight of sorrows!
My soul exclaims; Ah me! the despairing cry!O Train! have pity upon me
For you are strong and I am weak,
Transfer to my heart the load of your passengers
And take in exchange the weight of my sorrows.
Next time I saw the professor he was in charge of a newspaper kiosk in Palermo, looking older and more dilapidated and still waiting for the manna to fall from heaven. He complained of the slackness of trade. He also complained that the work was too hard and was killing him; so that, one way or the other, he intended to shut up the kiosk and look out for something else.
CATANIA
CHAPTER V—MICHELE AND THE PRINCESS OF BIZERTA
Educated Sicilians have not a high opinion of the marionettes; it is sometimes difficult to induce them to talk on the subject. They say the marionettes are for the lower orders and accuse them of being responsible for many of the quarrels we read about in the newspapers. The people become so fascinated by the glamour of the romance in which they live night after night that they imitate in private life the chivalrous behaviour of the warriors they see fighting in the little theatres, and thus what may begin as a playful reminiscence of something in last night’s performance occasionally leads to a too accurate imitation of one of last night’s combats and perhaps ends in a fatal wound. This being like the accounts in English papers about boys becoming hooligans or
running off to sea as stowaways in consequence of reading trashy literature, my desire to attend a performance of marionettes was increased, but I did not want to go alone for, in the event of a row, with knives, among the audience it would be better to be accompanied by a native.
I was in Palermo where I knew a few students, whose education was of course still incomplete, but they were cold on the subject and said that if they came with me we should probably be turned out for laughing. That was not what I wanted. It ought to have been possible to do something with the waiter or the porter, or even with the barber whom I met on the stairs and in the passages of the hotel when he came in the morning to shave the commercial travellers; but they all made difficulties—either they did not get away from their work till too late, or it was not a place for an Englishman or it was not safe. At home, of course, one does not go to the theatre with the waiter, but when in Sicily, though one does not perhaps do altogether as the Sicilians, one does not do as one does in England. I know a Palermitan barber with whom I should be proud to be seen walking
in the Via Macqueda any day—that is, any day when his Sunday clothes were not in pawn—and there used to be a conduttore at my hotel who took me round to many of the sights in the town and who was a person of such distinguished manners that when with him I felt as though walking with a Knight-Templar in disguise—a disguise that had to be completed by my buying him a straw hat, otherwise he would have given us away by wearing his cap with “Albergo So-and-so” written all round it. These are the people who really know about the marionettes, for whenever they get an evening off they go. It seemed, however, that I had met with a conspiracy of obstruction. Palermo was treating me as a good woman treats her husband when he wants to do something of which she disapproves—there was no explanation or arguing; what I wanted was quietly made impossible. So I replied by treating Palermo as a good man treats his wife under such circumstances—I pretended to like it and waited till I could woo some less difficult city.
Catania provided what I wanted. There I knew a professor interested in folk-lore and kindred subjects to whom I confided