s it should be, for romances have always been re-written to suit the
audience they are intended for. It has been going on about four months,
that is, since last October, when it began with Pipino, Re di Francia ed
Imperatore di Roma, the father of Carlo Magno, and it will continue day
after day till May, like the feuilleton in a journal. During the hot
weather there is no performance in this theatre; but the same story will
be taken up again next October and is long enough to last through two
winters. It could last longer, but they bring it within reasonable
limits by removing some of the boredom. It concludes with the defeat and
death of Orlando and the paladins at Roncisvalle.

The portion of the story appointed for the evening's performance was in
five acts, divided into a large number of very short scenes, and if I did
not always know quite clearly what was going on, that was partly due to
the distracting uproar, for nearly every scene contained a fight, and
some contained several, the shortest lasting well over a minute. Whoever
had been employed to shorten the story would have earned the thanks of
one member of the audience if he had acted upon Pococurante's remarks to
Candide about the works of Homer. He ought not to have left in so many
combats; they were as like one another and as tedious as those in the
_Iliad_, besides being much noisier, at least we are not told that the
Homeric heroes were accompanied by a muscular pianist, fully armed, and
by the incessant stamping of clogged boots. Nevertheless the majority of
the audience enjoyed the fights, for no Sicilian objects to noise.

This is what I gathered: Angelica had come from far Cathay with the
express intention of sowing discord among the paladins by inducing them
to fall in love with her, and at the present moment Sacripante and the
Duca d'Avilla were her victims. These two knights met in a wood, raised
their vizors and talked matters over; there was to be a fight about it,
of course, but the preliminaries were to be conducted in a friendly
spirit--like a test case in Chancery. They separated, no doubt to give
them an opportunity of going home to make their wills and take leave of
their wives and families, if any. In the second scene they met again,
lowered their vizors, drew their swords and fought till Angelica
supervened. In the next scene the two knights and Angelica were joined
by Medoro with whom one of the knights fought. I recognized M