ds and the five toes
of her feet had already become so conventionalised that all one could be
sure of was that there were still five of each. The corporal said that
this monster was Helen gazing out to sea from the topless towers of
Ilium. She was really looking the other way, exhibiting to the spectator
all that remained of the face that launched the thousand ships of which
half a dozen were shown riding at anchor behind her back. I did not
venture to criticise, because the corporal knew all about it, having seen
the _Story of Hector_ done by the marionettes. Filomena was embroidering
this most beautifully; I should say that the needle-working of it was as
much above all praise as the design of it was beneath all blame.

Most of the room was taken up by a bed large enough to hold three or four
Filomenas without crowding, and upon it lay a mandoline and a guitar.
The corporal called for music; Filomena cheerfully complied, left her
broidery-frame, and took up the mandoline, whose only title to be
considered a musical instrument is that Mozart uses it for the pizzicato
accompaniment which Don Giovanni plays while he sings "Deh Vieni."
Filomena, knowing nothing about Mozart, used her mandoline for the
delivery of a melody which she performed with great skill, though it was
but a silly tune and sounded sillier than it was because of the
irritating tremolo. It was like her embroidery--very well done but not
worth doing. She had been taught the mandoline by the nuns, who had also
taught her needlework. I expected the corporal to accompany her on the
guitar; he admitted that he was passionately devoted to music, but
excused himself from performing on the ground that he had not studied it.
This is not usually put forward as an objection; the rule is for them to
play and tell one, unnecessarily but with some pride, that they are doing
it all by ear. And in their accompaniment they show themselves to be
artists of the school that preaches "Simplify, simplify, simplify" in
that they exclude all harmonies except those of the tonic, dominant and
sub-dominant. But they make the mistake of not being careful always to
play each in its right place; they carry their simplifying process to the
length of using their chosen harmonies in regular order, one after the
other, two bars each--it may come right and it may not, and when it does
not the resulting complexities ruin the simplicity. This sort of thing
might become unbearable,