The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Roman Singer, by F. Marion Crawford

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Title: A Roman Singer

Author: F. Marion Crawford

Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12346]
[Date last updated: February 9, 2006]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A ROMAN SINGER

F. MARION CRAWFORD

1909

[Illustration: "Shut the door and double turned the lock."--Chap.
XXI.]

CHAPTER I

I, Cornelio Grandi, who tell you these things, have a story of my own,
of which some of you are not ignorant. You know, for one thing, that I
was not always poor, nor always a professor of philosophy, nor a
scribbler of pedantic articles for a living. Many of you can remember
why I was driven to sell my patrimony, the dear castello in the
Sabines, with the good corn-land and the vineyards in the valley, and
the olives, too. For I am not old yet; at least, Mariuccia is older,
as I often tell her. These are queer times. It was not any fault of
mine. But now that Nino is growing to be a famous man in the world,
and people are saying good things and bad about him, and many say that
he did wrong in this matter, I think it best to tell you all the whole
truth and what I think of it. For Nino is just like a son to me; I
brought him up from a little child, and taught him Latin, and would
have made a philosopher of him. What could I do? He had so much voice
that he did not know what to do with it.

His mother used to sing. What a piece of a woman she was! She had a
voice like a man's, and when De Pretis brought his singers to the
festa once upon a time, when I was young, he heard her far down below,
as we walked on the terrace of the palazzo, and asked me if I would
not let him educate that young tenor. And when I told him it was one
of the contadine, the wife of a tenant of mine, he would not believe
it. But I never heard her sing after Serafino--that was her
husband--was killed at the fair in Genazzano. And one day the fevers
took her, and so she died, leaving Nino a little baby. Then you know
what happened to me,