Of My Fellow-Guests In The Spacious Dining-Room
I Can Recall Only Two.
They were military men of a certain age,
grizzled officers, who walked rather stiffly and seated themselves
with circumspection.
Evidently old friends, they always dined at the
same time, entering one a few minutes after the other; but by some
freak of habit they took places at different tables, so that the
conversation which they kept up all through the meal had to be
carried on by an exchange of shouts. Nothing whatever prevented them
from being near each other; the room never contained more than half
a dozen persons; yet thus they sat, evening after evening, many
yards apart, straining their voices to be mutually audible. Me they
delighted; to the other guests, more familiar with them and their
talk, they must have been a serious nuisance. But I should have
liked to see the civilian who dared to manifest his disapproval of
these fine old warriors.
They sat interminably, evidently having no idea how otherwise to
pass the evening. In the matter of public amusements Catanzaro is
not progressive; I only once saw an announcement of a theatrical
performance, and it did not smack of modern enterprise. On the
dining-room table one evening lay a little printed bill, which made
known that a dramatic company was then in the town. Their
entertainment consisted of two parts, the first entitled: "The Death
of Agolante and the Madness of Count Orlando"; the second: "A
Delightful Comedy, the Devil's Castle with Pulcinella as the
Timorous Soldier." In addition were promised "new duets and
Neapolitan songs." The theatre would comfortably seat three hundred
persons, and the performance would be given twice, at half-past
eighteen and half-past twenty-one o'clock.
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