It Was Unpardonable In Me
That I Did Not Seek Out The Teatro Delle Varieta; I Might Easily
Have Been In My Seat (With Thirty, More Likely Than Three Hundred,
Other Spectators) By Half-Past Twenty-One.
But the night was
forbidding; a cold rain fell heavily.
Moreover, just as I had
thought that it was perhaps worth while to run the risk of another
illness - one cannot see the Madness of Count Orlando every day -
there came into the room a peddler laden with some fifty volumes of
fiction and a fine assortment of combs and shirt-studs. The books
tempted me; I looked them through. Most, of course, were
translations from the vulgarest French feuilletonistes; the
Italian reader of novels, whether in newspaper or volume, knows, as
a rule, nothing but this imported rubbish. However, a real Italian
work was discoverable, and, together with the unfriendly sky, it
kept me at home. I am sorry now, as for many another omission on my
wanderings, when lack of energy or a passing mood of dullness has
caused me to miss what would be so pleasant in the retrospect.
I spent an hour one evening at the principal cafe, where a pianist
of great pretensions and small achievement made rather painful
music. Watching and listening to the company (all men, of course,
though the Oriental system regarding women is not so strict at
Catanzaro as elsewhere in the south), I could not but fall into a
comparison of this scene with any similar gathering of middle-class
English folk.
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