Presently a greasy, throaty voice began to infect the air with reminiscences of O Sole Mio! Nearer and nearer it came until it floated into the piazza and a drunken vagabond reeled past us and out of sight. It
was a disturbance and we rose to go. I paid sevenpence for my supper, i.e. fourpence for the pesce stocco and bread, a penny for the wine, a penny for my share of the tocco wine and a penny for the waiter. Giovanni was pleased with me for giving the waiter a penny. He said I had done quite right because the waiter (who had never seen me before) was very fond of me. It was now half-past two and I supposed we might be going to bed, but on the way we sat down outside a second caffè, had some more tables out and ordered coffee. O Sole Mio! sailed towards us again, followed by the drunken man. They wanted to send him away, but Giovanni, watching him, said—
“Let him stay. Give me a cigarette, some one”—as usual he had smoked all his own.
He handed the cigarette to the man who accepted it and stood gesticulating, trying to light it and mumbling unsteadily till he veered off and capsized in a heap, spluttering and muttering in the gutter.
I said, “You have been taking a lesson for your next drunken man.”
“Of course I have,” he replied.
It was past three by the time we left the second caffè, but we drifted into a third and, after liqueur, really did at last set about going seriously to bed; but what with seeing one another home, trying to find the reason why Feudalismo was a better play than La Morte Civile (no one had any doubt that it was, but the reason was involved in declamation and gesticulation) and one thing and another, it was past four before we separated. We were standing on the pavement outside the albergo, our numbers reduced to ten or twelve; instead of saying “Good-night” to me in the usual way, Giovanni put his hands on my shoulders and said—
“Enrico mio! Caro fratello! Io ti voglio bene assai, assai, assai!”
These were his words, but, without his voice, they can convey no idea of the great burst of emotion with which he pronounced the “bene,” or of the sobbing diminuendo with which he repeated the “assai.”
Next morning there was a rehearsal at noon and plenty of work to be got through, because the tour was only beginning, and there were six new plays added to the repertoire and fifteen new performers to the