his hair plastered
into a love-lock on his forehead, like some of our dandies, nor is he
eternally pulling a pair of monstrous white cuffs over his hands.
Everything is very neat about him and very quiet, so that you would
hardly think he was an artist after all; and he talks but little,
though he can talk very well when he likes, for he has not forgotten
his Dante nor his Leopardi. De Pretis says the reason he sings so well
is because he has a mouth like the slit in an organ pipe, as wide as a
letter-box at the post-office. But I think he has succeeded because he
has great square jaws like Napoleon. People like that always succeed.
My jaw is small, and my chin is pointed under my beard--but then, with
the beard, no one can see it. But Mariuccia knows.

Nino is a thoroughly good boy, and until a year ago he never cared for
anything but his art; and now he cares for something, I think, a great
deal better than art, even than art like his. But he is a singer
still, and always will be, for he has an iron throat, and never was
hoarse in his life. All those years when he was growing up, he never
had a love-scrape, or owed money, or wasted his time in the caffe.

"Take care," Mariuccia used to say to me, "if he ever takes a fancy to
some girl with blue eyes and fair hair he will be perfectly crazy. Ah,
Sor Conte, _she_ had blue eyes, and her hair was like the corn-silk.
How many years is that, Sor Conte mio?" Mariuccia is an old witch.

I am writing this story to tell you why Mariuccia is a witch, and why
my Nino, who never so much as looked at the beauties of the generone,
as they came with their fathers and brothers and mothers to eat
ice-cream in the Piazza Colonna, and listen to the music of a summer's
evening,--Nino, who stared absently at the great ladies as they rolled
over the Pincio, in their carriages, and was whistling airs to himself
for practice when he strolled along the Corso, instead of looking out
for pretty faces,--Nino, the cold in all things save in music, why he
fulfilled Mariuccia's prophecy, little by little, and became perfectly
crazy about blue eyes and fair hair. That is what I am going to tell
you, if you have the leisure to listen. And you ought to know it,
because evil tongues are more plentiful than good voices in Rome,
as elsewhere, and people are saying many spiteful things about
him--though they clap loudly enough at the theatre when he sings.

He is like a son to me, and perhaps I am reco