“What a whale she is!” said a phthisic cigarette girl to her promised husband, who heard her not.
“An ugly figure she makes, truly,” sneered a barber’s wife to her husband. “A big cow like that in the frock of a child! No honest woman, one sees easily. And look, Adriano! Her nose! I find it similar to the snout of Signora Grametto’s little black-faced dog.”
There was no gainsaying this bold touch of the Supreme Sculptor’s realism. Glorious her black tresses, delectable her form and colour, uptilting and ample her nose.
The canzonet ended, she walked off without bowing to or glancing at the audience, but the men, one and all, their eye thirst still unslaked, joined in Signor Di Bello’s frantic demand for an encore. On she came with stolid countenance and began the song all over again, although the women had set up a hissing that matched the strength of the applause. Signor Di Bello called the flower girl into the box, bought an armful of her wares, and threw them wildly on the stage. They fell in a shower on all sides of Juno. Instantly she stopped, put her arms akimbo, and while the orchestra played on, glared blackly at her vehement admirer. Flowers for a Neapolitan of the Porto! Blossoms that have poison in their breath! Stupid Di Bello! Stupid Genovese! Twelve years in Mulberry, and to forget the hatred that Neapolitans of Naples have for natural blooms! Perhaps you thought she was from the country, like most of the people there. Bah! In such a serious matter one ought to be sure.
It was the women’s golden chance. They started a titter of derisive laughter that became a gale and swept through the theatre. Juno moved toward the box, trampling the odious flowers, and spat in the face of Signor Di Bello. Then she left the stage, followed by an outpour of boorish gibes.
“Infame! infame!” It was the voice of Bertino, crying loudly from the last row of benches, under the gallery hard by the door. With a firing emotion that he did not know was the green fever, he had watched the doings of his uncle, and when the bright colours rained about her, brushing her cheeks and hair, and whisking her shoulders, he thought with a heart-fall of the wretched blossom his hand had bestowed a week before at the Wooden Bunch. Madre Santissima! His uncle kissed her with lovely flowers, and he, miserable soul, kissed her with a spot of yellow paint. But when the people laughed and sneered, and he saw her anger kindle, her cause was his own. The pigs and sons of pigs! To laugh at her! At his queen, the amorosa of his dreamland, by sunglow and starshine, asleep or at work. Grander than the dames of Genoa palaces, more beautiful than the peaches of California. And his uncle! The old mooncalf! He was the cause of it all. Served him right that kiss she gave him back. Ha-ha! But these jeers, these hounds yelping at his queen! “Infame! infame!”
The people thought he meant it for Juno, and took up the cry, which did not subside until the Bay of Naples and the cone of Vesuvius rolled up from the bottom, and the second comedy began. Signor Di Bello had no appetite for this, and he left the box, passing out amid the nudges and snickers of the first families of the Genovesi, Milanesi, and Torinesi, who were there in force along with the flower of the Calabriani, Napolitani, and Siciliani. But he put a good face on the matter, and at the door hailed the impresario:
“Ha, Signor Grabbini! Your singer has at least one liquid tone.” And he disappeared, chuckling.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST LADY
The following night, and every night of the week, Signor Di Bello held forth ecstatically in the box at La Scala. But the warmth of his demonstrations for Juno was unable to melt the frost that her dreadful voice had caused to settle on the audience—a frost that grew thicker with each new display of her copious self. From his bench under the gallery Bertino was a witness of his uncle’s frantic courtship, and the green fever fairly consumed him, for he had decided that Juno was made for him, and that neither his uncle nor any one else should have her for wife. In the matter of courting he too had not been idle, though he was young enough to know better than to make a public show of his addresses. More than once it had occurred that while Signor Di Bello took his ease in the Caffè of the Three Gardens of an afternoon, Juno and Bertino passed a quarter of an hour together in the grocery. With a black mantilla of cheap lace thrown over her head, instead of the accustomed shawl that maids of Mulberry wear on working days, she visited the shop for her supply of salame, lupine beans, or the goat’s-milk cheese of which she told Bertino she was very fond. The first time she entered, his heart leaped and he began stammering excuses for the spot of yellow he had given her cheek at their last meeting. Would the beautiful signorina believe that it was all an accident, clumsy calf that he was—a mishap most stupid? He begged her to forgive him. Would she not? Oh, how happy it would make him!