ouple of mornings with the buffo in his
workshop helping to make the scene of the people escaping, which was
perhaps even better than being among the audience later. I think he is
most happy when he is holding up the mirror to nature and reproducing
modern Palermitan life as it appears to him. He enjoyed the devils and
the subterranean road, but the inhabitants of Paris in modern costume,
each saving his most precious object and escaping with the Pope through
the subterranean road to Montalbano, was a larger canvas and gave him
more opportunities. As a creative artist he is in the fortunate position
of being up to a certain point his own impresario, stage-manager and
performer. Nevertheless he has to rely on the co-operation of his father
and Gildo, and there is always the public to be considered, therefore it
is possible that some of the things we made and contemplated in the
workshop did not get so far as to be presented on the stage.

There was a sluggard carrying a mattress under each arm; and a drunkard
carrying a bottle of wine, a real glass bottle that would catch the light
and make an effect. Another man had on his back a table and was carrying
a plate, a knife, fork, spoon and napkin; he was a glutton. The masks
Pasquino and Onofrio were making a comic escape and talking in dialect;
Pasquino was carrying his wife Rosina on his shoulder and a pillow in his
hand, and Onofrio was saving an article of crockery made at Caltagirone.
And because the buffo was studying to become a singer he had made a
musician:

"But I cannot show his voice," he complained.

"He might be practising a solfeggio," I suggested, "which you could sing
for him." But this was not treating the buffo's voice with proper
respect. "Or put a piece of music-paper in his hand and make him a
composer."

"Bravo! But what is written on the music-paper?"

I said: "_Stornelli Montagnoli_."

He began to hum meditatively:

[Picture: Music in the Play]

"No," he said, "that won't do. In the first place it is not yet known in
Palermo, and when it is, it will be so popular that no one in particular
will think of saving it."

"Very well then," I replied, "make it that he has just discovered an
entirely new resolution of the dominant seventh and has written it down
before he forgets it."

"All right. And this is the painter; he has his easel and a picture
which he has only just begun; that is more precious to him th