ng the houses, from which came a great peeping of shy
eyes, the Signor suddenly raised his fingers to his throat and sounded a
shocking b-r-rr-rrr of alarm and anxiety. Then there arose a murmur,
almost pitiful it was so heartfelt, as of bees who fear an irreparable
tragedy in the hive. The old chief came out of the council-house upon
the hands of his good-natured sons-in-law, and he was full of tenderness
and concern. I saw my friend escorted into his own dwelling by ladies
who sighed and commiserated. But already the call for help had reached
the tenor's slip of a wife; and she, with hands that shook, was
preparing a compress of leaves that smelt of cinnamon and cloves. I,
too, showed solicitude, and timidly helped my conqueror to the heaped
mats upon which he was wont to recline in the heat of the day. He had
made himself a pair of very round terrified eyes, and he had not taken
the compress from his throat. But he spoke quietly, and as one possessed
of indomitable fortitude. In Malay he told his people that it was
"nothing, just a little--brrr--soreness and thickening," and he let slip
such a little moan as monkeys make. To me he spoke in Italian.

"I shall have to submit to a bandage," said he. "But there is nothing
the matter with my throat" (slight monkey moan here for benefit of
adorers), "absolutely nothing. I have invented a slight soreness so--so
that you could see for yourself ... so that you could see for
yourself.... If you were to count those here assembled and those
assembled without, you would number our entire population, including
children and babes in arms" (a slight moan while compress is being
readjusted over Adam's apple by gentle, tremulous brown fingers), "and
among these, my friend, are no dissenters. There is none here to stand
forth and say that on Tuesday night Signor And-he-pronounced-it's
singing was lacking in those golden tones for which we used to look to
him. His voice, indeed, is but a skeleton of its former self, and shall
we say that the public must soon tire of a singer with so pronounced a
tendency to flat?

"Here in this climate," he continued, "my voice by dint of constant and
painstaking care and practice has actually improved. I should not have
said that this was possible; but a man must believe experience.... And
then these dear, amiable people are one in their acclaim of me; although
I sometimes grieve, not for myself, but for them, to think that they can
never _really_ kno