Part 38

"No," I answered. "He is an Italian. Those were his horses you tamed this afternoon."

"Is that so? Well, I would not like to tell him that them boys of his can't ride worth a cent and the horses ain't worth their hide."

I hoped that Duke Sermoneta had not overheard this conversation.

Buffalo Bill showed us a young Indian woman who had had a baby a few days ago.

"It was baptized this morning," he added. "What do you think it was called?"

"Is it a boy or a girl?" asked the Duke, looking at the brown, wizened face of the little thing, which was swaddled in an old shawl.

"A girl," answered the young mother, in English.

"Then I suppose you called it Roma," I said.

"No," said Buffalo Bill. "It is the custom among the Indians to give to the baby the name of the first thing the mother sees after its birth."

"Then they must have named it Tent," I said.

Buffalo Bill laughed. "No, you must guess again. It was called Saint Peter's."

"Poor little girl!" said the kind-hearted Duke, and put a gold piece in the ready and delighted hand of the mother.

ROME, 1890.

Dear ----,--Signor Sonsogni, the promoter of music and art, gave several librettos of operas to different composers in Italy, and promised a large reward to the victorious competitor.

Signor Crispi kindly offered me his loge, thinking that it would interest me to be present at one of the performances. There had been many of these before, but nothing remarkable had so far been produced.

We arrived in the theater while they were playing a short opera of two acts, which was unfavorably received and quickly condemned with contempt and hisses.

The judges looked bored to death and discouraged, and the audience seemed ready to growl and grumble at anything.

Mugnoni led the orchestra in his usual excitable manner. If any of the operas had been good for anything they would have shown at their best under his masterful baton.

Then came the "Cavalleria Rusticana."

Already when the overture was played the audience was enchanted, and as it progressed the enthusiasm became greater and greater, the excited audience called for the autore (author).

Mascagni, urged and pushed forward from the sidewings, evidently against his will, appeared, looking very shabby in an old gray suit with trousers turned up, as if he had just come in from the street. His hair was long and unkempt, his face haggard and thin--evidently he had been starved and unwashed for weeks. This really was the case.

He bowed modestly and with a naïf awkwardness which was very pathetic. The Italian public, just as wild in its enthusiasm as it is merciless in its disapproval, rose as one man with a bound and cheered vociferously. But when the Intermezzo was played there was a burst of thundering applause, clapping of hands, and shouts of enthusiasm. I never heard anything like it.

Mascagni was called at least twenty times before the curtain. Any other composer would have beamed all over with joy and pride at such an ovation, but Mascagni only looked shy and bewildered. The tears rolled down my cheeks as I looked at the poor young fellow (he is only twenty years old), who probably that very morning was wondering how he could provide food for his wife and baby. Fancy what his emotions must have been to wake up so unexpectedly to glory and success!

Mascagni, his wife, and his baby lived in a garret, and had not money enough to buy even a candle. The only instrument he had when he wrote the opera was an accordion. His little wife is nineteen, and the baby is one year old.

Italy thought it possessed another Verdi. The next day after his triumph Leghorn (his birthplace) gave him the citizenship of the town. Sonsogni handed him a large sum of money (the promised prize), and Mascagni had orders to begin on another opera. Will that be as good? One says that necessity is the mother of invention; it seems that in this case poverty was the father of "Cavalleria Rusticana."

1890.

Dear ----,--Johan is named to Stockholm, and we must leave Rome. Needless to say that I am broken-hearted to leave Italy and the Queen.

MILAN, September 16.