ome with a pair of scissors and
crouch under her mantle and cut off his locks and drop them into a
shallow round box upon the floor, as in Carpaccio's picture in Milan, and
she would wake him up, exclaiming--

"The Philistines be upon thee, Samson," and he would rise powerless and
be taken and bound in fetters of brass.

Nevertheless, the marionettes, with all the romance of their story and
the unexpected way in which their movements stimulate the imagination,
would certainly fail without the wizardry of the voice of the speaker,
for the voice is the soul of the marionettes. And as the cobbler from
Mount Eryx found his opportunity in the Death of Bradamante at Trapani,
so the voice at Palermo would surely have done something with the
Blinding of Samson--something perhaps not unworthy of _Total Eclipse_.
It communicated to us the dignity and beauty of Samson's character; when
he was observing the industrious bees it was full of pity for the dead
lion, and we knew that the poor beast had had every chance of escape and
had only been killed after a delay that was longer than it was judicious.
And so we knew that he did not kill the soldiers till his great patience
had been exhausted and the voice was full of sorrow for their death.

Why should he be so constantly driven to use his strength? Why could he
never use it without harming some one? Why was he born into a world
where men played on his simplicity and women charmed him to destruction?
These were the riddles that confused Samson. It seemed to him that he
was no better than the Arabian giant who held the Princess of Bizerta in
thrall--that cruel bully who cared not how many he killed, nor who they
were, and believed every man to be as wicked as himself. Samson, each
time his patience was exhausted, hated himself for what he had to do, yet
no experience could shake his faith in that melancholy but attractive
swindle--the ultimate goodness of man. Both Samson and the giant were as
mistaken as they were powerful, but Samson, by virtue of his weakness,
was the stronger man, for, while the giant's brutality aroused our
hatred, Samson's nobility compelled our love.

CHAPTER XV--THE CONVERSION OF THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE

Being alone one autumn evening in Palermo, about a year and a half after
I had seen Samson, I returned to the teatrino and found it open. On
asking the young man at the door whether the performance had begun and
whether there was room for me,