walk always
as smoothly as they move their heads and arms. It might, however, be
necessary for them to have more strings, and this would make them more
difficult to manipulate. In Sicily the marionettes who tell the story of
the Paladins do not lay themselves out to be of a mechanism so ingenious
that they shall appear to be alive; such illusion as they do produce,
like the incompetent illustration to Shakespeare which Lamb preferred, is
insufficient to cripple the imagination of the audience who are the more
intimately touched by the romance of the story and by the voice of the
speaker.

The back cloth was raised and we had before us a tranquil sea with two
little islands sleeping under a sunset sky. Michele entered; he was a
very splendid fellow in golden armour with draperies of purple and
scarlet and white, and in his helmet a plume that nearly trailed on the
ground. No playbill was provided, but none was wanted for Michele, he
could not have been taken for anything but an operatic tenor of noble
birth about to proceed against the Saracens. He first meditated and then
soliloquized as he paced the sandy shore. The Princess of Bizerta in a
flowing robe, covered with spangles, though not actually in sight, was
not far off, imparting her griefs to the unsympathetic ocean. Spying the
paladin, she strolled in his direction and spoke to him, but it was not
an assignation; Michele, indeed, was obviously distressed at having his
soliloquy interrupted; nevertheless, being a knight and a gentleman, he
could but reply politely, and so they got into conversation. She told
him who she was, which would not have been necessary if they had ever met
before, then she told him of her unhappy plight, namely, that she was in
the custody of an Arabian giant, and then she implored his assistance.

Michele was as unsympathetic as the ocean, his mind being full of
Saracens; but before he had time to invent a plausible lie, the giant
entered very suddenly. Physically he was not a particularly gigantic
giant, being but three or four inches taller than Michele. If he had
been much more, his head, which like that of all stage giants was
undeveloped at the back, would have been hidden by the clouds that hung
from the sky. His inches, however, were enough, for, in romance, height
is given to a giant to symbolize power, and provided he is perceptibly
taller than the hero, the audience accept him as a giant and a bully and
one, moreover