similar names to their brushes.

If Pasquale's statements were at variance with other poetical versions of
the story, they were, as might be expected, still more so with the prose
authorities. In the books, Carlo Magno was born sometimes in the castle
of Saltzburg, in Bavaria, and sometimes at Aix-la-Chapelle; which may be
good history, but could not well be represented by the marionettes
without a double stage, and even then might fail to convince. The Carlo
Magno of romance, son of Pipino, King of France, and Berta, his wife, was
not born until many years after the wedding; for Berta had enemies at the
French Court who spirited her away immediately after the ceremony,
substituting her waiting-maid, Elisetta, who was so like her that Pipino
did not notice the difference. Elisetta became the mother of the wicked
bastards Lanfroi and Olderigi, while Berta lived in retirement in the
cottage of a hunter on the banks of the Magno, a river about five leagues
from Paris. Pipino lost himself while out hunting one day, took refuge
in the cottage, saw Berta, did not recognize his lawful, wedded wife and
fell in love with her over again. Carlo Magno was born in due course in
the cottage, and his second name was given to him, not for the prosaic
reason that it means the Great, but because it is the name of the river.
The bastards afterwards murder their father, which is a warning to any
bridegroom among the audience to be careful not to mistake another lady
for his bride upon the wedding night. And thus Romance becomes the
handmaid of Morality.

Carlo Magno is now on the throne. I was presented to him, and found him
in mourning for a nephew who had been killed a few evenings before and
whose corpse was still hanging on a neighbouring peg, waiting for the
slight alteration necessary to turn him into some one else. All the
paladins who had recently lost relations were in mourning and wore long
pieces of crape trailing from their helmets. Pasquale took me round,
told me who they all were and explained their genealogies.

I was in a hades peopled with the ghosts of Handel's operas. I saw
Orlando himself and his cousins "Les quatre fils Aymon," namely Rinaldo
da Montalbano, Guicciardo, Alardo, and Ricciardetto. I saw their father,
whose name in Italian is Amone, and their sister Bradamante, the widow of
Ruggiero da Risa, and her sister-in-law, the Empress Marfisa, Ruggiero's
sister. These two ladies were in armour, showin