we must not tell
the public everything--it would take too long."

"Ah yes! We must not bore the public or they will not come again to the
teatrino, and then where would the money come from to pay for my singing
lessons?"

So we let the Cold Dawn follow among the rest. There were half a dozen
rollicking blue-jackets off the warship in the port, they had been
spending the evening with their girls and were escaping with them. When
I objected that Paris was a sea-port town only in a Bohemian sense, he
replied that that was enough for him; and when I said that if the sailors
really had a ship anywhere near, they would have done better to escape by
sea, he complained that I was being fastidious.

There were soldiers arm-in-arm and singing, they had been interrupted
while drinking in a wine-shop in a side street off the Via Macqueda and
were saving the marsala which they had not finished.

After them came the maresciallo dei carabinieri in the uniform he wears
for a festa, with a plume in his three-cornered hat. He was a broad,
beefy fellow, taller than the soldiers, being made of a marionette who is
usually a giant. He came swinging along, all so big and so burly,
followed by a lady, showily dressed, who walked mincingly and was saving
a pair of pink satin shoes and a powder-puff. She kept calling to him to
stop, she wanted to speak to him. But he would not listen, he was not
going to pay any attention to her--not in his gala uniform, it would not
have been proper. Besides, there were people looking.

A blind musician with a broken nose and a falsetto voice was led by his
mate who carried a 'cello. An interrupted wedding party followed, and
school-children with their professors, sick people out of the hospital
with doctors and nurses to help them, and a rabble of water-sellers,
shoe-blacks, pedlars and men pushing carts.

Then followed the paladinessa Ettorina still mad, so mad that they were
dragging her along and forcing her to escape while she struggled to get
free and did not want to go, because a mad person does not understand
danger. And paladins and warriors came--Amantebrava, Lungobello,
Ottonetto and many more whose names I do not remember.

Last of all came Pope Gregorio III. He was not one to leave the city
till the last of his flock had been saved. He wore his tiara and was in
white robes with a red cross front and back; he carried his crosier in
his left hand and on his right thumb was a diamo