Next evening the play was Feudalismo. Giovanni does not return from prison; he is a shepherd and is made to marry a girl without being told of the relations that had subsisted between her and his lord. He and his wife fall in love with one another, he discovers the deception, kills his lord and carries his wife off on his shoulders to live happily with him among his sheep in the mountains.

We went round to his dressing-room after the performance to congratulate him; when he began to bring the interview to a close, saying that no doubt it was now my bedtime, I interrupted

“If you are going to supper presently, may I be allowed to accompany you?”

He was delighted, patted me on the back and exclaimed, “Bravo, bravo!”

It took us some time to get away; most of the company came into his dressing-room to say “Good-night” to him, men, women and children all came; each of the children expected some little attention, and Giovanni playing with a child is a beautiful sight. Then there were congratulating friends clustering round him and managers and secretaries waiting for instructions. At last, with only about fifteen others, we proceeded, stopping on the way for a prickly drink to cool us after the performance, and the barman was so overcome by the honour of serving Giovanni that we had the greatest difficulty in forcing him to accept payment. We arrived at a small piazza where five or six more of the company were waiting for us at a restaurant.

Tables were set out under the stars and we sat down to supper which was the same for all: stock fish (which they called pesce stocco and sometimes stocca fiscia), bread and wine. Giovanni kissed the loaf before cutting it, as he does on the stage.

After supper it was proposed that we should play at Tocco. I did not thoroughly understand the game, but it was something of this kind: Wine was sent for and we all threw out one or more fingers of one hand, perhaps there might be seventy-two fingers; then we were counted, beginning with the one who had proposed the game and going over us again and again until seventy-two was reached with some one who thereupon became padrone of the wine. He was entitled to drink it all, but every Sicilian is a born gentleman, so he appointed one of the company présidente and another sotto-présidente, poured out a little wine for himself and handed the bottle to the présidente, who again might drink it all if he liked. But the game was that he made a speech proposing so-and-so as a suitable person to be invited to drink, and the sotto-présidente made another speech giving his reasons for agreeing or differing. Any one who considered himself aggrieved might plead for himself, and there was some risk in giving the verdict against him because sooner or later he was pretty certain to become présidente or sotto-présidente and to take his revenge. This gave opportunities for declamation and gesticulation and resulted in much merriment.

Some discussion presently arose as to how far Africa and America are the same place: one of the actors, who had not forgotten his geography, said it was well known that they are separate countries, being, in fact, two of the quarters of the globe. Whereupon Peppino remembered how when he was at school one of the boys, on being asked to name the quarters of the globe, replied

“The five quarters of the globe are four in number and they are the three following, viz. Europe and Asia.”

“Bravo, bravo!” shouted Giovanni, and repeated the sentence several times in his deep, rich voice.

But however amusing this might be, it did not convince us all that the two names might not apply to one place; so the geographical actor went further and told us that Africa had been known since the earliest ages, that it was not very far from Sicily and contained Tunis, a city which the company had visited on one of their tours, whereas America was a long way off, on the other side of the world, and had been discovered in comparatively recent times, and, strange to say, by an Italian. Giovanni at once showed great interest.

“Tell us about it,” he said, leaning forward.

“His name was Cristoforo Colombo,” said the actor. “He was poor and confided his difficulty to a priest who happened to be the queen’s confessor and a kind-hearted man. This priest went to the queen and said, ’May it please your Majesty, I have a friend, Cristoforo Colombo, who wishes to discover America but he has no money to buy ships.’ The queen thought it would be a good thing that America should be discovered and promised to give him as much money as he wanted for the purpose.”

“Oh, bel!” exclaimed Giovanni. “Let us drink the health of the good queen.”

“She died some years ago,” said the actor in a warning tone.

“Then,” said Giovanni, bowing his head reverently and crossing himself, “let us drink to the repose of her blessed soul.”

We did so and had all about the voyage and the tunnies, the flight of the birds, the alarm of the crew when the meteor appeared, their disappointment when the fancied land vanished in the morning, their wonder at the distant moving light, their impatience and their turbulence. All this he did, still sitting on his seat and gesticulating. When he came to the mutiny he rose. He was peculiarly well able to tell us about the mutiny because, in addition to the usual sources of information, he had recently taken part in a performance of the story got up for a charity in Palermo and he had been the one chosen by lot to kill Colombo. He conspired apart with imaginary sailors, occasionally glancing and pointing furtively towards the other end of the piazza. When the murder had been sufficiently agreed upon, he snatched a knife off the supper-table and, hiding himself behind our chairs, crept cautiously towards that part of the deck where Colombo stood busily discovering America through a telescope, the invention of another Italian named Galileo (who was born some seventy years later). He took the knife from between his teeth where he had been carrying it, and was about to commit the dastardly act when Colombo turned round, seized him by the collar, flung him away and had him put into chains. He was brought up again when land was in sight and told to look ahead.

“But what do I see?” said the sailor, shading his eyes. “What strange vegetation is yonder and what unknown beasts? When I look upon these potatoes, this tobacco for the nose, all these elephants and cucumbers and trees full of monkeys, it appears to me that I am taking part in the discovery of America. O noble captain! Pieta, pieta!”

With this he knelt at the feet of Colombo who pardoned him, and the sailors embraced and wept for joy.

And all the time Giovanni sat gazing and listening with all his eyes, his ears, his expressive hands and his eloquent back as though it was the first he had ever heard of it, which can hardly have been the case. More probably he was considering and criticizing the speaker’s delivery and mentally casting him for a part in a new play, for he lives in his art; his meals, his sleep, his recreations are all arranged with a view to the theatre whose only rival in his affections is his mother.

Then we went on with the game, if this did not form part of it, and I was given some wine and invited to drink. It was an occasion not to be passed over in silence, so, although I am not good at speech-making, I rose with my glass in my right hand and, laying my left on Giovanni’s shoulder said

“Quattro sono lé cinque parti del mondo e sono lé tre seguenti: Sicilia, Inghilterra.”

Giovanni led the applause with shouts of “Bravo, bravo!” but before I could drink, my glory slipped off me, the stars went out and the world came to an end. I had spilt my wine. He saw my distress and at once took charge of the situation

“Oh, che bel augurio!” he exclaimed.

I tried to apologize.

“No, no, it will bring us good fortune,” and turning sorrow into joy again, he dipped his finger in the spilt wine and anointed my forehead and the back of my neck; I did the same to him; he took up the bottle, flourished it in the air, sprinkling every one of us with wine, and then flung it away empty over our heads, so that it crashed down on the pavement and the pieces skated across the piazza, bang up against the opposite house. Thus we baptized our friendship and in a fresh bottle drank to its eternal continuance. He then became Carlo Magno again and declared that I was padrone of the theatre, and that if I did not come every night to see him act, and to supper afterwards, there would be an eruption of Mount Etna and he would never speak to me again.

Presently a greasy, throaty voice began to infect the air with reminiscences of O Sole Mio! Nearer and nearer it came until it floated into the piazza and a drunken vagabond reeled past us and out of sight. It was a disturbance and we rose to go. I paid sevenpence for my supper, i.e. fourpence for the pesce stocco and bread, a penny for the wine, a penny for my share of the tocco wine and a penny for the waiter. Giovanni was pleased with me for giving the waiter a penny. He said I had done quite right because the waiter (who had never seen me before) was very fond of me. It was now half-past two and I supposed we might be going to bed, but on the way we sat down outside a second caffè, had some more tables out and ordered coffee. O Sole Mio! sailed towards us again, followed by the drunken man. They wanted to send him away, but Giovanni, watching him, said

“Let him stay. Give me a cigarette, some one” as usual he had smoked all his own.

He handed the cigarette to the man who accepted it and stood gesticulating, trying to light it and mumbling unsteadily till he veered off and capsized in a heap, spluttering and muttering in the gutter.

I said, “You have been taking a lesson for your next drunken man.”

“Of course I have,” he replied.

It was past three by the time we left the second caffè, but we drifted into a third and, after liqueur, really did at last set about going seriously to bed; but what with seeing one another home, trying to find the reason why Feudalismo was a better play than La Morte Civile (no one had any doubt that it was, but the reason was involved in declamation and gesticulation) and one thing and another, it was past four before we separated. We were standing on the pavement outside the albergo, our numbers reduced to ten or twelve; instead of saying “Good-night” to me in the usual way, Giovanni put his hands on my shoulders and said

“Enrico mio! Caro fratello! Io ti voglio bene assai, assai, assai!”

These were his words, but, without his voice, they can convey no idea of the great burst of emotion with which he pronounced the “bene,” or of the sobbing diminuendo with which he repeated the “assai.”

Next morning there was a rehearsal at noon and plenty of work to be got through, because the tour was only beginning, and there were six new plays added to the repertoire and fifteen new performers to the company, which numbers in all forty-four persons.

Giovanni sat with the prompter at a table and the actors went through various passages requiring consideration. He was too intent upon getting things right to waste any time by losing his temper, nor did I ever see any sign of irritation or hear him speak a hasty word. It is true he kicked Pietro off the stage one day, but he did it with the volcanic energy of Vanni kicking his wife out of the house at the end of the second act of La Zolfara. And Pietro was not really touched, he had acted in many unwritten dramas, understood in a moment, played up with the correct stage exit and we all laughed at the impromptu burlesque or modificazione, as one of them called it.

If Giovanni was not satisfied, he got up and showed the actor how he wanted the passage done. If Berto still failed to satisfy him, he was immediately replaced by Ernesto, if Ernesto could not do it, there was always Pietro who could do nearly anything. Berto was the only one of the company who had any self-consciousness in his acting or, rather, in his attempts at acting. Probably he will return to the drapery shop in which he has hitherto been an assistant, after a pleasant wanderjahr with the company. Ernesto has been some time on the stage and was formerly a barber; he is, in fact, still a barber and shaves the company, thereby adding to his salary, the greater part of which he sends every week to his wife who is at home with his two children.

Sicilians do not like being separated from their families and, as travelling expenses are paid, if the husband and wife are both employed in the theatre, it costs no more to bring the children than to leave them at home. The principal lady is the wife of one of the young actors and they have brought the baby. The brother of this lady is chief stage carpenter and property-man, and is married to another lady of the company. One of the under-carpenters is stepson of the chief comic who was formerly a fruit seller and is a little fellow of inexhaustible drollery with a flavour of Dan Leno in his method.

I dined one day with the actor who does old priests, respectable commissaries of police, chief peasants and anything of that kind, a man of about forty who formerly kept a shop and sold grain. His wife, the daughter of artists, is about the same age and does comic mothers, women who know a thing or two and won’t stand any nonsense, garrulous duennas and so on. They had brought four of their children and occupied a fairly large room with a kitchen, which they had taken for the week. The children also act if required; one of them, Lola, a girl between five and six, was on the stage all through the first act of one of the plays; she had only a few words to speak, and all the rest of the time was moving about; she tried the rocking-chair, she stood irresolute on the side of one foot leaning against a table with a finger to her mouth, she found a ball, tossed it up, missed it and ran after it, she climbed up to a table, got a piece of bread and ate it. She had not been taught any of this business. They had merely said to her, “Play about, Lola,” and, being the daughter of artists, she had played about with an unconscious spontaneity that was startling. Had there been an irritable uncle on the scene he must have exclaimed

“For goodness’ sake, do send that child to bed.”

Lola was at home upon the stage and was acting accordingly, if it can properly be called acting, at any rate she was playing. What was Giovanni doing at supper? Is Giovanni only an actor when on the stage and when everything he says and does has been thought out? Is he a great actor by virtue of producing the illusion of being a Lola? And is Lola not really an actress at all, because she has not prepared what she is doing and is not even trying to produce any illusion? What is acting? And what is realism? Here are more problems for discussion at supper under the stars and on the way to bed at four o’clock in the morning problems not easily solved by a company of gesticulating freebooters who are for ever making raids, first into stage-land, then into real life, and lifting incidents across the border into that buffer-state where they lead a joyous life between the two.