that here was an impromptu interpolation, and would applaud the actor both for the idea and for the way it was carried out.
Gradually Giovanni added written plays and a prompter, and was the first to take on tour a company of actors performing in a Sicilian dialect. He also included plays written in Italian. These written plays, though constructed with more care, did not depart far from the style with which he began. Giovanni still frequently returns from prison, but as he never forfeits the sympathy of the audience, if he really committed the crime it was in self-defence. Whatever the play may be, it always contains, besides the inevitable scenes of violence, many other passages such as hearing a letter read (he is then a simple fellow who cannot read), collapsing in the presence of the Madonna (he is then deeply religious), dancing at a festa (he is a perfect dancer), confiding, with his last breath, the name of his murderer to his young brother who promises to execute the vendetta. In these passages his humour, his delicacy, his grace, his tenderness, his voice and, most wonderful of all, his apparently intense belief in the reality of everything he says and does make one
forget how crude and transpontine the bare theme is.
On my saying I should like to see more of him, Peppino asked why I had come away so soon. I had thought he must be tired and would want to be alone and change his dress.
“Never is he alone,” said Peppino. “Surely now shall he be suppering by his friends.”
We thought it too late to go and look for him then, so we determined to ask ourselves to supper after the play the following evening.
CHAPTER XVII—SUPPER WITH THE PLAYERS
Next evening the play was Feudalismo. Giovanni does not return from prison; he is a shepherd and is made to marry a girl without being told of the relations that had subsisted between her and his lord. He and his wife fall in love with one another, he discovers the deception, kills his lord and carries his wife off on his shoulders to live happily with him among his sheep in the mountains.
We went round to his dressing-room after the performance to congratulate him; when he began to bring the interview to a close, saying that no doubt it was now my bedtime, I interrupted—
“If you are going to supper presently, may I be allowed to accompany you?”