Ceccarelli's voice possesses, he thinks Ceccarelli knows as much about
singing as an old slipper, and that he--Capuzzi--is the person to
enchant the world. But as the Pope's principal singer bears the proud
name of Edoardo Ceccarelli di Merania, our Capuzzi likes to be styled
'Signor Pasquale Capuzzi di Senegaglia,' for his mother bore him in
that place, and, in fact, people say, in a fishing-boat, from sudden
terror at the rising of a sea-calf, and there is, consequently, a great
deal of the sea-calf in his nature. In early life he put an opera on
the stage, and it was hissed off it in the completest manner possible;
but that did not cure him of his craze for writing diabolical music. On
the other hand, when he heard Francesco Cavalli's opera, 'Le Nozze di
Teti e di Peleo,' he said the Capellmeister had borrowed the most
sublime ideas from his own immortal works; for saying which he had a
narrow escape of cudgellings, or even of knife-thrusts. He is still
possessed with the idea of singing arias, accompanying himself by
torturing a wretched guitar, which has to groan and sigh in support of
his mewing and caterwauling. His faithful Pylades is a broken-down,
dwarfish Castrato, whom the Romans call Pitichinaccio; and guess who
completes the trio. Well, none other than the Pyramid Doctor, who emits
sounds like a melancholy jackass, and is under the impression that he
sings a magnificent bass, as good as Martinelli's, of the Papal Chapel.
Those three worthies meet together of evenings, and sit on the balcony,
singing motetts of Carissimi's till all the dogs and cats in the
neighbourhood yell and howl, and the human beings within earshot devote
the hellish trio to all the thousand devils.

"My father," Antonio continued, "was in the habit of going in and out
of the house of this incomparable idiot, Signor Pasquale Capuzzi (whom
you know sufficiently well from my description), because he used to
dress his wig and his beard. When he died, I undertook those offices,
and Capuzzi was greatly pleased with me, firstly, because he considered
that I was able to give his moustaches a bold upward twist in a manner
which nobody else could, and further, doubtless, because I was
satisfied with the two or three quattrinos which he gave me for my
trouble. But he thought he was over-paying me, inasmuch as, every
time I dressed his beard he would croak out to me, with closed eyes,
an aria of his own composing, which flayed the skin off my ea