“L’i ... ra daver ... so daver
... so il fato
lo piu no ... no ... no ... non temero!”
The theatre was all a-quiver, signori miei!
though I too did not fall short, I too after him.
“L’i ra daver ... so daver
... so il fato
Temer piu non davro!”
And all of a sudden, he crashed like lightning, like
a tiger: Morro!... ma vendicato ... Again
when he was singing ... when he was singing that celebrated
air from “Matrimonio segreto,” Pria
che spunti ... then he, il gran Garcia,
after the words, “I cavalli di galoppo”—at
the words, “Senza posa cacciera,”—listen,
how stupendous, come e stupendo! At that
point he made ...’ The old man began a
sort of extraordinary flourish, and at the tenth note
broke down, cleared his throat, and with a wave of
his arm turned away, muttering, ‘Why do you
torment me?’ Gemma jumped up at once and clapping
loudly and shouting, bravo!... bravo!... she ran to
the poor old super-annuated Iago and with both hands
patted him affectionately on the shoulders. Only
Emil laughed ruthlessly. Cet age est sans pitie—that
age knows no mercy—Lafontaine has said already.
Sanin tried to soothe the aged singer and began talking
to him in Italian—(he had picked up a smattering
during his last tour there)—began talking
of ‘paese del Dante, dove il si suona.’
This phrase, together with ‘Lasciate ogni
speranza,’ made up the whole stock of poetic
Italian of the young tourist; but Pantaleone was not
won over by his blandishments. Tucking his chin
deeper than ever into his cravat and sullenly rolling
his eyes, he was once more like a bird, an angry one
too,—a crow or a kite. Then Emil, with
a faint momentary blush, such as one so often sees
in spoilt children, addressing his sister, said if
she wanted to entertain their guest, she could do
nothing better than read him one of those little comedies
of Malz, that she read so nicely. Gemma laughed,
slapped her brother on the arm, exclaimed that he
‘always had such ideas!’ She went promptly,
however, to her room, and returning thence with a small
book in her hand, seated herself at the table before
the lamp, looked round, lifted one finger as much
as to say, ’hush!’—a typically
Italian gesture—and began reading.
Malz was a writer flourishing at Frankfort about 1830,
whose short comedies, written in a light vein in the
local dialect, hit off local Frankfort types with
bright and amusing, though not deep, humour.
It turned out that Gemma really did read excellently—quite
like an actress in fact. She indicated each personage,
and sustained the character capitally, making full
use of the talent of mimicry she had inherited with
her Italian blood; she had no mercy on her soft voice
or her lovely face, and when she had to represent some
old crone in her dotage, or a stupid burgomaster,
