l mondo e sono le tre seguenti: Sicilia,
Inghilterra."

Giovanni led the applause with shouts of "Bravo, bravo!" but before I
could drink, my glory slipped off me, the stars went out and the world
came to an end. I had spilt my wine. He saw my distress and at once
took charge of the situation--

"Oh, che bel augurio!" he exclaimed.

I tried to apologize.

"No, no, it will bring us good fortune," and turning sorrow into joy
again, he dipped his finger in the spilt wine and anointed my forehead
and the back of my neck; I did the same to him; he took up the bottle,
flourished it in the air, sprinkling every one of us with wine, and then
flung it away empty over our heads, so that it crashed down on the
pavement and the pieces skated across the piazza, bang up against the
opposite house. Thus we baptized our friendship and in a fresh bottle
drank to its eternal continuance. He then became Carlo Magno again and
declared that I was padrone of the theatre, and that if I did not come
every night to see him act, and to supper afterwards, there would be an
eruption of Mount Etna and he would never speak to me again.

Presently a greasy, throaty voice began to infect the air with
reminiscences of _O Sole Mio_! Nearer and nearer it came until it
floated into the piazza and a drunken vagabond reeled past us and out of
sight. It was a disturbance and we rose to go. I paid sevenpence for my
supper, _i.e._ fourpence for the pesce stocco and bread, a penny for the
wine, a penny for my share of the tocco wine and a penny for the waiter.
Giovanni was pleased with me for giving the waiter a penny. He said I
had done quite right because the waiter (who had never seen me before)
was very fond of me. It was now half-past two and I supposed we might be
going to bed, but on the way we sat down outside a second caffe, had some
more tables out and ordered coffee. _O Sole Mio_! sailed towards us
again, followed by the drunken man. They wanted to send him away, but
Giovanni, watching him, said--

"Let him stay. Give me a cigarette, some one"--as usual he had smoked
all his own.

He handed the cigarette to the man who accepted it and stood
gesticulating, trying to light it and mumbling unsteadily till he veered
off and capsized in a heap, spluttering and muttering in the gutter.

I said, "You have been taking a lesson for your next drunken man."

"Of course I have," he replied.

It was past three by the time we left the secon