subject, as the father did, is called “recitare a soggetto.” When the girls spoke, the father prompted, if necessary, and this they call “recitare col suggeritore”—to speak, with the assistance of a prompter, words that have been learnt.
For the second performance I was among the audience, and this is what I saw. It may not be in every detail in complete accordance with the received views of historians, but the marionettes take their history wherever they find it. In this case they found it not in Gibbon but in a favourite legend of the people, and, considering that they depend upon the favour of the people, to take it from that source was a judicious proceeding.
The curtain rose on a bedroom in the palace in Rome. Constantine, Emperor of the World, was lying in just such a bed as Pasquino or Onofrio might have, with pillows and sheets and a red flowered counterpane. He was endeavouring to allay the irritation of his skin caused by the painful malady from which he had been suffering for twelve years. A sentinel stood at the foot of the bed.
Amid shouts of “Evviva Costantino,” two Christians were brought on in chains.
They knelt to the emperor who offered to spare their lives if they would become Saracens or Turks or pagans—that is, if they would adopt his religion. Of course, they indignantly refused and were led off to be burnt, leaving the emperor restlessly soliloquizing to the effect that all Christians must be burnt and all doctors, too, if they could not cure him.
This was the cue for the family doctor to enter with a specialist.
“Come sta vostra Maiestà stamattina?” inquired the family doctor, and the patient declared himself no better—he was much the same.
I expected the doctor to feel his pulse and look at his tongue, but the buffo told me that this is not done in leprosy and that it was wrong of his brother at the afternoon performance to outrage realism by making one of them lay his hand upon the emperor’s fevered brow; his father had reproved him for it and the action was not repeated in the evening. One cannot be too careful in dealing with diseases of a contagious nature.
The doctors consulted, and with unexpected unanimity and rapidity recommended the emperor to bathe in the blood of six