s just over eleven,
not a member of the company but, being at school in Messina, his sister
had taken him to stay with her for the week, and we became great friends.
I was thinking of him when writing about Micio buying chocolate and
story-books at Castellinaria in Chapter XVIII of _Diversions in Sicily_.
When Giovanni and the company departed from Messina to continue their
tour, Turiddu and his younger brother, Gennaro, remained in Messina with
their professor and, as their mother, Signora Balistrieri, was touring
with another company in South America, they had no home to go to for
Christmas and remained with the professor for the holidays.

On the 27th December, Giovanni and his company, after being in Egypt and
in Russia, arrived at Udine, north of Venice. They heard nothing of the
earthquake until the evening of the 29th December, about forty hours
after the event, when the news reached them in the theatre during the
performance of _La Figlia di Jorio_. The next day Giovanni and six of
the company started for Messina; they wanted to ascertain for themselves
the extent of the disaster and whether the earthquake had affected
Catania, where most of their relations and friends were. Among the six
were Corrado Bragaglia and Vittorio Marazzi, whose particular object was
to find out what had happened to Turiddu and Gennaro. When the company
came to London in the spring of 1910 Corrado gave me an account of their
adventures. They arrived in Naples where they were delayed a day, which
they spent in meeting fugitives, but they heard no news of the boys.
They reached Messina on the 1st January and, taking a basket of
provisions and medicines, started for the professor's house, treading on
dead bodies as they walked through the falling rain and fearing lest
another shock might come or that at any moment some already shattered
house might fall on them. The professor's apartments were on the first
and second floors of one side of a courtyard that stood between a street
and a torrent; the front doors of the different apartments opened into
the court as in a college building; the professor's side of the court was
nearest the torrent and did not fall, but the other three sides of the
court fell and the houses on the opposite side of the street fell, so
that the debris made it difficult to approach the street door of the
court and still more difficult afterwards to approach the doors of the
different sets of apartments.

They