.

On the other side of the stage were two rows of pagans who in this hades,
where the odium theologicum persists, are not admitted among Christians.
Here hung Il Re Marsilio di Spagna, who was to be defeated this evening,
and his two brothers, Bulugante and Falserone, his son the Infanta di
Spagna, his nephew Ferrau, now dead, and Grandonio. Then I came upon a
miscellaneous collection and could look at no more knights or ladies
after I had found the devil.

He was not The Devil, he was only "un diavolo qualunque," but he was
fascinating, and he had horns and a tail--Pasquale and the other youths
showed me his tail very particularly and laughed at him cruelly for
having one. But it was not his fault, poor devil, that he had a tail:
except for the wear and tear of his tempestuous youth he was as he had
left the hands of his maker.

There was also a skeleton; they made him dance for me and said that he is
used to appear to any one about to die; but this cannot apply to the
warriors, for they fight and die freely, and put whole families into
mourning nightly, and if the skeleton appeared to them every time, a new
one would be wanted once a month.

And there was "un gigante qualunque"--the raw material for a giant,
something that could be faked up into this or that special giant when
wanted. Similarly there was a lady having her dress and wig altered,
they told me she was "una donna qualunque"--the very words I had seen a
few weeks previously written up in Rome to advertise a performance in
Italian of _A Woman of no Importance_. I suspect there must have been
somewhere "un guerriero qualunque" so constructed that his head could be
cut off, and that he had been disguised as and substituted for the Duca
d'Avilla when Ferrau appeared to kill that warrior, for, without
trickery, no sword in the teatrino, not even la Durlindana, could have
cut off a head which had an iron rod running through it.

There was a confused heap of Turks and Spanish soldiers lying in a
corner, and at the back of the stage, between the farthest scene and the
wall of the theatre, was the stable containing seven war horses and one
centaur. Pasquale told me that the centaur was "un animale selvaggio"
which I knew, but he did not tell me what part he took in the play. One
of the horses, of course, was Baiardo, the special horse of Rinaldo.
Baiardo is still living in the forest of Ardennes, he formerly belonged
to Amadis de Gaul and was found in a