Part 5 (1/2)
The curtain fell, while Galafrone had the corpses cleared away, and rose again on the same scene which was the ante-chamber of Angelica's bedroom--for somehow we were now in her father's dominions, and it was she who had sent the knights and the Turks to kill Ferrau before he could approach her. Then there was an interview between Ferrau and Galafrone on the subject of Angelica. The knight, having made her a widow, now wished to make her his wife, the king saw no objection and promised to use his influence with his daughter.
The scene changed to Angelica's bedroom; her bed was at the far end of the stage with a patchwork quilt over it, but there was no other furniture in the room except a sofa near the front. Her father brought her in and I, knowing that she was to kill herself personally and that this must be her last entry, examined her closely and detected a string pa.s.sing through her right hand and ending in the hilt of a dagger ostentatiously concealed in her bosom. Of course I knew what that meant.
Her father, true to his promise, began to urge Ferrau's suit, saying that he had forgiven him for having killed Medoro. But Angelica had not forgiven him, and moreover she hated Ferrau with his bloodshot eyes and his explosive manners. She made a long speech, admirably delivered by the cobbler and as full of n.o.ble sentiments as a poem by Mrs. Browning, then, suddenly drawing her dagger with the string, she stabbed herself and fell dead on the couch, exclaiming--
”A rivederci.”
It was an extremely neat suicide and her father concluded the entertainment by weeping over her body.
These marionettes were not nearly so comic in their movements as the life-sized ones in Catania, not because they were better managed, but because they attempted less and because, being so small, their defects were less obvious. A small one may, and generally does, enter like a bird alighting on a molehill, but he has such a short distance to go that he is at rest before one realizes that he has not attempted to walk.
Besides it is a mode of progression we are all familiar with, having practised it in dreams since childhood. A life-sized marionette, on a larger stage, has, perhaps, two or three yards to traverse; he tries to take steps and is easily caught tripping, for without strings to his feet his steps can only be done in a haphazard way. There are marionettes with strings to their feet, and though they may do _The Story of the Paladins_, this is not their usual business, they are more elaborately articulated, and are intended for operas, ballets and other complicated things.
And then, again, in Catania a glimpse of the hand of an operator or of some one standing in the wings offended at once as a blot on the performance. But looking at the small figures at Trapani one accepted them almost immediately as men and women, and forgot all about absolute size, so that when the hand of an operator appeared and it was larger than the head of a marionette, it seemed to belong to another world, while a real man standing in the wings could not be seen above his knees, and it required a mental effort to connect his boots and trousers in any way with the performance.
The speaker at Catania did well with a good voice; nevertheless one felt that disaster was in the neighbourhood and was being consciously avoided.
The idea of failure never crossed the mind of the cobbler from Mount Eryx. His voice was rich and flexible, full of variety and quick to express a thousand emotions. Listening to it was like looking long and long into a piece of Sicilian amber in whose infinite depth, as you turn it about in the sunlight, you see all the colours of the rainbow, from red, through orange, yellow, green and blue, even to a glowing purple.
There was nothing he could not do with it, and he managed it with the quiet dignity and easy grace of a young lion at play.
CHAPTER VII--THE DEATH OF BRADAMANTE
Before the last act, which concluded with the death of Angelica, a dwarf had appeared in front of the curtain (not a human dwarf, but a marionette dwarf) and recited the programme for the following day, stating that the performance would terminate with the death of Ferrau. Unfortunately I was not able to witness his end, but I went to the teatrino the evening after. We arrived early and began by inspecting the programme--
Carlo ottiene piena vittoria contro Marsilio-- Fuga di costui e presa di Barcelona-- Marfisa trova Bradamante che more fra le sue braccia.
Charles obtains complete victory over Marsilio-- Flight of the latter and taking of Barcelona-- Marfisa finds Bradamante who dies in her arms.
We then went behind the scenes to spend some time among the puppets before the play began. First I inquired whether Ferrau had perished and ascertained that Orlando had duly killed him the night before with la Durlindana. This famous sword was won by Carlo Magno in his youth when he overcame Polinoro, the captain-general of Bramante, King of Africa.
Carlo Magno, having another sword of his own and wis.h.i.+ng to keep la Durlindana in the family, pa.s.sed it on to his nephew Orlando. That is Pasquale's version. Others say that it was given to Orlando by Malagigi the magician. The most usual account is that la Durlindana belonged to Hector. After the fall of Troy it came to AEneas; and from him, through various owners, to Almonte, a giant of a dreadful stature, who slew Orlando's father. An angel in a dream directed Orlando, when he was about eighteen, to proceed to a river on the bank of which he found Carlo Magno and Almonte fighting. He took his uncle's part, avenged his father's death by killing Almonte, threw his gigantic body into the stream and appropriated his enchanted possessions, namely, his horse, Brigliadoro, his horn, his sword and his armour. He had the sword with him when he was defeated at Roncisvalle and threw it from him, about two hundred miles, to Rocamadour in France where it stuck in a rock and any one can see it to this day.
I do not remember that Homer speaks of Hector's sword as la Durlindana; perhaps he did not know. But every one knows that horses have had names, both in romance and real life, from the days of Pegasus to our own.
Mario calls his horses Gaspare, after one of the Three Kings, and Toto, which is a form of Salvatore. They were so called before he bought them, or he would have named them Baiardo and Brigliadoro. Having no sword, he calls his whip la Durlindana. He a.s.sured me that the barber whom he employs calls all his razors by the names of the swords of the paladins, and that the shoe-blacks give similar names to their brushes.
If Pasquale's statements were at variance with other poetical versions of the story, they were, as might be expected, still more so with the prose authorities. In the books, Carlo Magno was born sometimes in the castle of Saltzburg, in Bavaria, and sometimes at Aix-la-Chapelle; which may be good history, but could not well be represented by the marionettes without a double stage, and even then might fail to convince. The Carlo Magno of romance, son of Pipino, King of France, and Berta, his wife, was not born until many years after the wedding; for Berta had enemies at the French Court who spirited her away immediately after the ceremony, subst.i.tuting her waiting-maid, Elisetta, who was so like her that Pipino did not notice the difference. Elisetta became the mother of the wicked b.a.s.t.a.r.ds Lanfroi and Olderigi, while Berta lived in retirement in the cottage of a hunter on the banks of the Magno, a river about five leagues from Paris. Pipino lost himself while out hunting one day, took refuge in the cottage, saw Berta, did not recognize his lawful, wedded wife and fell in love with her over again. Carlo Magno was born in due course in the cottage, and his second name was given to him, not for the prosaic reason that it means the Great, but because it is the name of the river.
The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds afterwards murder their father, which is a warning to any bridegroom among the audience to be careful not to mistake another lady for his bride upon the wedding night. And thus Romance becomes the handmaid of Morality.
Carlo Magno is now on the throne. I was presented to him, and found him in mourning for a nephew who had been killed a few evenings before and whose corpse was still hanging on a neighbouring peg, waiting for the slight alteration necessary to turn him into some one else. All the paladins who had recently lost relations were in mourning and wore long pieces of c.r.a.pe trailing from their helmets. Pasquale took me round, told me who they all were and explained their genealogies.
I was in a hades peopled with the ghosts of Handel's operas. I saw Orlando himself and his cousins ”Les quatre fils Aymon,” namely Rinaldo da Montalbano, Guicciardo, Alardo, and Ricciardetto. I saw their father, whose name in Italian is Amone, and their sister Bradamante, the widow of Ruggiero da Risa, and her sister-in-law, the Empress Marfisa, Ruggiero's sister. These two ladies were in armour, showing their legs, and in all respects like the men warriors, except that they wore their hair long.
”Bradamante will die this evening,” said Pasquale.
I expressed regret, and asked for particulars.
”She will die of grief for the loss of her husband, Ruggiero da Risa, who has been killed by the treachery of Conte Gano.”
Then I saw my fellow-countryman, Astolfo d'Inghilterra; he it was that brought back from the moon the lost wits of Orlando when he became furioso because Angelica would have nothing to say to him and married Medoro. And I saw Astolfo's father, Ottone d'Inghilterra, and Il Re Desiderio and Gandellino, who seemed undersized; but when I said so, Pasquale replied--
”Si, e piccolo, ma e bello--stupendo,” and so he was.