though she were still hoping
to get a few more drops of enjoyment out of the squeezed orange of her
wasted life.

"And this must be Rosina," whispered the buffo; "Dio mio, how death has
aged her!" Seeing I was about to speak, he interrupted me: "It does not
do to be fastidious. No real Sicilian would make any objection."

The lady sang a song telling us in the Neapolitan dialect that her notion
of happiness was to stroll up and down the Toledo ogling the men. When
she had finished acknowledging the applause she departed and, almost
immediately, they both came on together.

"I told you so," exclaimed the buffo triumphantly; "they have met in
paradise and are happy at last."

They performed a duet in the Neapolitan dialect and showed us how they
strolled up and down the Toledo ogling one another. After they had
finished acknowledging the applause the curtain fell and we all left the
theatre. I said:

"I do not know whether you are aware of what you have done, but by making
that temple of spangled pastry into heaven you have wrecked your
tragedy."

"Oh, I gave up my tragedy as soon as I saw where we were, and the play
ended quite in your manner, didn't it? like the Comedy of Dante. Or do
you mean that you have any doubts about that last act taking place in
heaven?"

"I have many doubts about that."

"I admit, of course, that it would have been more satisfactory, and much
clearer as a comedy, if we could have seen them both die before they went
to paradise."

"Would you like me to tell you the plain, straightforward, honest, manly,
brutal truth about it?"

"Very much indeed, if you don't mind; but I should not like you to strain
yourself on my account."

"All right, Buffo, I'll be careful. Now listen. I don't believe that
the last act, as you call it, had anything to do with the story. It was
a music-hall turn added at the end of the play merely to close the
entertainment and send the audience away in good spirits."

"But that wrecks your comedy. And if the play was neither comedy nor
tragedy, what was it? You cannot expect a simple Portuguese gentleman
from Rio to understand your Sicilian dramas all at once."

"And we have not time now to discuss the question exhaustively, for if
you do not go to bed immediately you will never be up to-morrow in time
to catch your train back to Palermo, and if you are late what will papa
say and what will the public think when they find nothing ready in the
tea