With this he knelt at the feet of Colombo
who pardoned him, and the sailors embraced and wept for joy.
And all the time Giovanni sat gazing and listening with all his eyes, his ears, his expressive hands and his eloquent back as though it was the first he had ever heard of it, which can hardly have been the case. More probably he was considering and criticizing the speaker’s delivery and mentally casting him for a part in a new play, for he lives in his art; his meals, his sleep, his recreations are all arranged with a view to the theatre whose only rival in his affections is his mother.
Then we went on with the game, if this did not form part of it, and I was given some wine and invited to drink. It was an occasion not to be passed over in silence, so, although I am not good at speech-making, I rose with my glass in my right hand and, laying my left on Giovanni’s shoulder said—
“Quattro sono le cinque parti del mondo e sono le tre seguenti: Sicilia, Inghilterra.”
Giovanni led the applause with shouts of “Bravo, bravo!” but before I could drink, my glory slipped off me, the stars went out and the world came to an end. I
had spilt my wine. He saw my distress and at once took charge of the situation—
“Oh, che bel augurio!” he exclaimed.
I tried to apologize.
“No, no, it will bring us good fortune,” and turning sorrow into joy again, he dipped his finger in the spilt wine and anointed my forehead and the back of my neck; I did the same to him; he took up the bottle, flourished it in the air, sprinkling every one of us with wine, and then flung it away empty over our heads, so that it crashed down on the pavement and the pieces skated across the piazza, bang up against the opposite house. Thus we baptized our friendship and in a fresh bottle drank to its eternal continuance. He then became Carlo Magno again and declared that I was padrone of the theatre, and that if I did not come every night to see him act, and to supper afterwards, there would be an eruption of Mount Etna and he would never speak to me again.