grotto by Malagigi when he found
Rinaldo's sword, Fusberta, which used to belong to the King of Cyprus.

It appeared to me time to go to the front, but Pasquale said that this
evening I might stay behind during the performance if I liked and I
accepted his invitation, for I had a toy theatre of my own once and used
to do _The Miller and His Men_ with an explosion at the end; it had to be
at the end, not only as a bonne-bouche, but also because my audience, not
being composed of Sicilian facchini, were driven out of the room by its
effects. Smokeless explosions may be possible now, but we did not then
know how to do any better. I would have given much--even the
explosion--if I could have had a teatrino and real marionettes of my own,
as one of my Sicilian friends had when he was a boy; he dressed his own
dolls and made his own scenery, and used to do the _Odyssey_--a
first-rate subject that could easily be made to last two winters.

I was so much interested that I may have paid less attention this evening
to the story than to the working of the puppets. The rods that pass
through their heads have wooden handles and end in hooks; across the
stage, pretty high up, were laid two horizontal laths with six or seven
chains hanging from them; when the paladins appeared, marching in one
after another and taking up their positions in two rows, as they
frequently did, what really happened was that an operator on one side
reached across and handed them over one by one to an operator on the
other side, who hooked them up into the chains, choosing the link
according to the height of the particular puppet in such a way that, if
possible, its feet just rested upon the stage. After three or four had
been hooked up, the first operator could hang up the rest, and as soon as
the two rows were in their places Carlo Magno entered in front and
addressed them in a majestic voice. During the pauses of his speech and
at its conclusion the paladins all murmured in agreement or shouted
"Evviva" which was done by us who were behind and, as there were thirteen
of us, it ought to have sounded fairly imposing. Three of the thirteen
were regular operators, pretty constantly employed, who took off their
coats, waistcoats and shirts, and found it very hot work; of the
remainder some were authorized assistants, some were friends and one was
the reader--"Lui che parla."

The siege of Marsilio's city was managed in this way. First a scene was
let