er with whom I should be proud
to be seen walking in the Via Macqueda any day--that is, any day when his
Sunday clothes were not in pawn--and there used to be a conduttore at my
hotel who took me round to many of the sights in the town and who was a
person of such distinguished manners that when with him I felt as though
walking with a Knight-Templar in disguise--a disguise that had to be
completed by my buying him a straw hat, otherwise he would have given us
away by wearing his cap with "Albergo So-and-so" written all round it.
These are the people who really know about the marionettes, for whenever
they get an evening off they go. It seemed, however, that I had met with
a conspiracy of obstruction. Palermo was treating me as a good woman
treats her husband when he wants to do something of which she
disapproves--there was no explanation or arguing; what I wanted was
quietly made impossible. So I replied by treating Palermo as a good man
treats his wife under such circumstances--I pretended to like it and
waited till I could woo some less difficult city.

Catania provided what I wanted. There I knew a professor interested in
folk-lore and kindred subjects to whom I confided my troubles. He
laughed at me for my failures, assured me there was no danger and offered
to take me. It was a Sunday evening. On arriving at the teatrino, he
spoke to an attendant who showed us in by a side entrance and gave us the
best places in the house, that is, we were near the only open window.
The seating arrangements would have been condemned by the County Council;
there were rows of benches across the floor and no passages, so that the
people had to walk on the seats to get to their places; two galleries ran
round the house very close together, an ordinary man could not have stood
upright in the lower one, and it was difficult to move in the upper one
in which we were, because the arches supporting the roof nearly blocked
it in three places on each side. Presently a man came round and
collected our money, twenty centimes each, the seats on the ground being
fifteen.

There were four boys sitting on the stage, two at each side of the
curtain, as they used to sit in Shakespeare's theatre. Like the rest of
the audience, these boys were of the class they call Facchini, that is,
porters, coachmen, shop assistants, shoeblacks, water-sellers, and so on.
It sometimes happens when travelling in Sicily that one has to spend half
an hour, ha