compare it
was my duty to support the family. In the second place I had seen the
Entry with Palms at the duomo in the morning and had all the rest of the
week free to see the marionettes do the rest of the story. So I went to
the Teatro Pezzana in the evening. It is a small place, small enough to
have been formerly used for marionettes, and was now being used by a
Society of Lovers of the Drama. Turiddu was presiding over the
box-office and had considered my requirements. He sent me in with his
young brother Gennaro, who found me a place, and I saw a play which
cannot be considered seriously except as an opportunity for the actress
who undertakes the part of Margherita Gautier. On this occasion it was
undertaken by Desdemona Balistrieri, Turiddu's sister, a girl of fifteen
years and ten months, two years older than himself; I had never expected
to see so young a Margherita Gautier. She gave a remarkable performance
with nothing childish about it and nothing--but it would be unbecoming in
me to praise the sister of my compare. Her grandmother, the old lady
referred to in Chapter XVII (_ante_) who slept in the piazza after the
earthquake, was Prudenza, and her mother, Signora Balistrieri, was
Olimpia and appeared between the old generation and the young, joining
and yet separating them. Turiddu's part was small; he was merely a page
bringing a letter or a message.

MONDAY

In the afternoon I went to the Teatro Sicilia and found everything
prepared for the evening. Christ and the apostles were sitting at the
supper-table as in Leonardo's fresco in Milan; not that they were
imitating Leonardo, the early mosaics and the miracle plays, influencing
and counter-influencing one another, must have determined the composition
of the representations of the Last Supper before Leonardo's time; he was
not inventing, he was giving the people something they were accustomed to
see and the marionettes were similarly following their own traditions. I
do not think the apostles were all in their usual places, S. John was
next to Christ, but Judas was at one end of the table--a terrible fellow
with shaggy black hair falling over his face--and he had not spilt the
salt. There was no salt for him to spill. Signor Greco told me that
when they perform the Orioles play at Palermo, they use a horse-shoe
table, Judas sits near one end and not only spills the salt, but behaves
like a naughty child, putting his elbows on the table and