oduces a good effect when applied to
a small and fairly light marionette will not do when applied to one that
is nearly a metre and a half high and weighs about fifty kilogrammes; it
is like trying to play an elaborate violin passage on the horn. Soon we
were politely invited to go to the front, where we were shown into good
places, and the performance began. In the auditorium there was the
familiar, pleasant, faint crackling of melon seeds and peanuts which the
people were munching as at home, and a man pushing his way about among
them selling lemonade, and water with a dash of anise in it.

The buffo thought the marionettes of Catania were magnificent,
well-modelled and sumptuously dressed; but their size and their weight
make it impossible for them to move with the delicacy and naturalness
which he and his father and brother know so well how to impart to those
at home. They may start fairly well, but sooner or later the figure will
betray to the public the fatigue of the operator who is standing
exhausted on the platform behind, no longer capable of communicating any
semblance of life to the limbs of the puppet. He did not, however,
arrive at this conclusion all at once, for, in the course of the
performance when I asked him how it was that the marionettes of Catania
were not more expressive, he replied:

"I suppose it must be on account of the lava."

The figures appear against the back-cloth and the operator cannot reach
forward to bring them nearer to the audience, thus the front part of the
stage is free--or rather it would be free, but the public are permitted
to stray on to it, and thus the stage presents a picture of marionettes
with two or three live people sitting at each side.

"Buffo mio," I said, "does it appear to you to be a good plan that the
public should go on the stage and mingle with the paladins? It is not
allowed in our own theatre at home."

"I am not sure that it is a bad plan," he replied, "it is true we do not
allow it in Palermo; but one moment, if you please, there is something
coming into my head. Ah! yes, it is about holding up the mirror to
nature. Now here, in Catania, this stage presents a truer mirror of
nature than ours in Palermo. For have you not observed in life that,
with the exception of a few really sensible people like you and me, most
men are merely puppets in the hands of others? They do not act on their
own ideas nor do they think for themselves; also they adop