morning, after which the happy pair would drive down to the station in a cart, the side panels painted with scenes from the story of Orlando out of the marionette theatre, and the back panel with a ballet girl over the words “Viva la Divina Provvidenza.” Then they would take the train to Palermo for a honeymoon of three days. The interval between the two ceremonies was to be spent in dancing and, if I liked, Peppino would take me to see it.
So in the evening we went to a house at the other end of the town, “far away—beyond the Cappucini,” as Peppino said. We entered by a back door which led directly into a small bedroom containing the music: one clarionet, a quartet of Saxhorns, and one trombone. The room also contained four babies in one bed, and two more on a mattress on the floor, all peacefully sleeping. These were the babies that had succumbed to the late hour, their mothers having brought them because they wanted their suppers, and would presently want their breakfasts. We sat among the band and the babies for some time to get accustomed to the noise, and then passed into the room where the dancing was going
on. All round sat the friends and relations, some with babies, some without; and all the ladies very serious, the bride in the middle chair of a row along one wall was so desperately serious that she was quite forbidding.
As when the traveller asks the chambermaid if he can have his linen back from the wash in time to catch an early train, and notices an expression passing across her face as she replies, “Impossibilissimo!”—well knowing that nothing is easier, only she wants an extra fifty centimes—even such an expression did I see not passing across the face of the bride, but frozen upon it as she sat with her back up against the wall frowning on the company. Peppino said she was all right. Brides have to behave like this; they consider it modest and maiden-like to appear to take no interest or pleasure in their wedding ceremonies.
The bridegroom was a very different sort of person—gay, alert and all the time dancing, talking, laughing and gesticulating with every one, as though his good spirits and vitality were inexhaustible.
The guests on the chairs left space for only two couples at a time. At the first opportunity Peppino began to dance, choosing
for his partner a young lady who was not merely the prettiest girl in the room, but the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She was also an exception to the other ladies in that she looked happy, especially when dancing with Peppino. She had a quantity of fine, black, curly hair, a dark complexion and surprising eyes, like Love-in-a-mist when the morning sun shines on it, full of laughter and good humour. Her eyelids, her nose and chin, her full lips and the curves of her cheeks were modelled with the delicate precision of a violin, and when she moved it was with that wave-o’-the-sea motion which Florizel observed in Perdita’s dancing. I put her black hair and complexion down to some Arabian ancestor, and her blue eyes to some Norman strain.
“Who is that wonderfully beautiful girl you have been dancing with, Peppino?” said I.
He replied, with a rather bored air, that her name was Brancaccia, and that she was the daughter of a distant cousin of his father who kept a curiosity shop in the corso.
“How long has this been going on, Peppino? Why did you never mention Brancaccia to me before?”