“Va via, Sansone,” but they only got themselves into trouble, for he took them all up and threw them back into the castle and we heard each of them fall separately.
“Aprite,” said Samson, “datemi il mio genitore.”
Then there came a comic dwarf; Samson looked at him scornfully, and saying—
“Cosa vuoi, Insetto?” took him up, twirled him round and round and threw him away.
Then Pasquino and Onofrio came on; Samson, after doing them some damage, but not so much as they deserved because they were favourites with the audience, passed by them and disappeared in the direction of the castle gate. We heard him knock and we heard the movement within, indicating serious
alarm, while the masks made comments in dialect. This was repeated and repeated with a roaring crescendo until, with a crash, the walls of the castle fell upon the stage—a bushel of stones—and Samson entered carrying the castle gates under his left arm and his father on his right, and the delighted audience applauded as the curtain fell.
After this we came away, which I have often regretted since, because these marionettes were the best I had seen. They were worked by artists who understood the handling of repose and the value of small things well placed. Occasionally, it is true, the figures moved too much and were unintentionally comic, but wonderful effects were produced by very slight movements. When a puppet was delivering a tirade, the listener, standing as motionless as one of the knights at Catania, would sometimes turn his head almost imperceptibly, or shift his weight from one leg to the other, or place his right hand on his hip with his arm a-kimbo. The action not only expressed contempt, acquiescence, or boredom as the case required, but vivified the whole scene, spreading over it like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond.
If I had been as strong as Samson I would
have stayed to the end, for I knew he could not be wearing all that loose, brown hair merely to toss it back when he was fighting. The Philistines would come later on and bribe the lady to entice him and see wherein his great strength lay, and he would be enticed and, forgetting how she had betrayed him over the riddle, would tell her everything; for he had a guileless, generous nature, and every time he was deceived thought it an exceptional case and no rule for future conduct. And presently the lady would make him sleep upon her knees and a young man would come with a pair of scissors and crouch under her mantle and cut off his locks and drop them into a shallow round box upon the floor, as in Carpaccio’s picture in Milan, and she would wake him up, exclaiming—
“The Philistines be upon thee, Samson,” and he would rise powerless and be taken and bound in fetters of brass.