is salary, the greater part of which he sends every week to
his wife who is at home with his two children.

Sicilians do not like being separated from their families and, as
travelling expenses are paid, if the husband and wife are both employed
in the theatre, it costs no more to bring the children than to leave them
at home. The principal lady is the wife of one of the young actors and
they have brought the baby. The brother of this lady is chief stage
carpenter and property-man, and is married to another lady of the
company. One of the under-carpenters is stepson of the chief comic who
was formerly a fruit seller and is a little fellow of inexhaustible
drollery with a flavour of Dan Leno in his method.

I dined one day with the actor who does old priests, respectable
commissaries of police, chief peasants and anything of that kind, a man
of about forty who formerly kept a shop and sold grain. His wife, the
daughter of artists, is about the same age and does comic mothers, women
who know a thing or two and won't stand any nonsense, garrulous duennas
and so on. They had brought four of their children and occupied a fairly
large room with a kitchen, which they had taken for the week. The
children also act if required; one of them, Lola, a girl between five and
six, was on the stage all through the first act of one of the plays; she
had only a few words to speak, and all the rest of the time was moving
about; she tried the rocking-chair, she stood irresolute on the side of
one foot leaning against a table with a finger to her mouth, she found a
ball, tossed it up, missed it and ran after it, she climbed up to a
table, got a piece of bread and ate it. She had not been taught any of
this business. They had merely said to her, "Play about, Lola," and,
being the daughter of artists, she had played about with an unconscious
spontaneity that was startling. Had there been an irritable uncle on the
scene he must have exclaimed--

"For goodness' sake, do send that child to bed."

Lola was at home upon the stage and was acting accordingly, if it can
properly be called acting, at any rate she was playing. What was
Giovanni doing at supper? Is Giovanni only an actor when on the stage
and when everything he says and does has been thought out? Is he a great
actor by virtue of producing the illusion of being a Lola? And is Lola
not really an actress at all, because she has not prepared what she is
doing and is not even