“None; neither the _Times_, nor the _Daily News_, nor the _Temps_, nor
the _Nord_; they are all empty as my pockets. I don’t in the least know
how to make up this evening’s Foreign Intelligence. There is a little
about Afghanistan in the _République_, but all stale matter hashed up
for the third or fourth time. I shall have to end by translating the
latest Assembly scandal from the _Figaro_.”
_Enrico Onufrio._
_WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK._
It is said among business men that it requires twelve Jews to cheat a
Genoese; but twelve Genoese are not enough to cheat a Greek.... Only one
person, that I ever heard of, enjoys the not very enviable distinction
of having cheated—not merely one Greek, but two.
He was a Bari man.
He was returning to Italy, but had no boots—or rather, the things he had
were no longer boots. He carefully counted up his money, found that he
had not enough to buy a new pair, and so quieted his conscience. Then he
went to a shoemaker’s in the Street of Hermes.[11]
“I want a pair of shoes by Monday morning, to fit me exactly, with round
toes,” etc.; in short, he gave the fullest directions.
“Certainly, sir. You shall have them without fail. They shall be sent to
your house at ten on Monday morning.”
The Bari man left his address and departed.
In the Street of Æolus he entered another shoemaker’s shop and ordered a
precisely similar pair of shoes in the same terms.
“Have I made myself understood?”
“Perfectly. Let me have the address, and on Monday at ten——”
“I shall not be in at ten. Don’t send them before eleven.”
“At eleven you may count on having them, without fail.”
On Monday at ten the first victim appeared. The gentleman tried on the
shoes; the right was a perfect fit, the left was fearfully tight over
the instep; it wanted stretching a little.
“All right,” said the obliging tradesman; “I will take it away, and
bring it back to you to-morrow.”
“Very well; and I will settle your account then.”
The shoemaker bowed himself out with the left shoe.
At eleven, punctual as a creditor, arrived the second predestined
victim. The same scene was repeated; but this time it was the right shoe
that did not fit.
“You will have to put it over the last again, my friend.”
“We’ll soon set that right, sir.” And this shoemaker, more knowing than
the other, was about to take both shoes away with him.
“Leave the other,” said the Bari man. “It’s a fancy of mine ... if you
take them both, some one may come in and find that they fit him, and you
will sell them to him, and I shall have to wait another week.”
“But I assure you, sir——”
“No, no, my friend; I know how things go. I want this pair of shoes and
no other, and I insist on keeping the one.” The shoemaker bowed his head
with a sigh, and went away to stretch the right shoe.
An hour later the Bari man and his shoes were already on board the
Piræus steamer; and on the following day the two victims met on his
doorstep, each with a shoe in his hand, and looked into each other’s
rapidly lengthening faces.
_Napoleone Corazzini._
_THE FAMOUS TENOR, SPALLETTI._
About a week after my arrival at Athens I was enjoying a _tête-à-tête_,
at the Samos Restaurant, with a lamb cutlet of most unexampled obduracy,
when there entered a stout individual, somewhere on the wrong side of
fifty, dressed with great care, and sporting a gold chain of such length
and massiveness that it might have served to fasten up a mastiff. His
hands were covered with rings; and, in entering, he made noise enough
for ten. Accosting a waiter who could speak Italian, he roared—
[Illustration:
“WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK.”
]
“_Giuraddio!_ What has become of my place?”
“This way,—this way, sir; there are four places at this table.”
It was the one where I was sitting.
The stout gentleman contorted his features with disgust, uttered
language which would have been enough for any Arian, and came and sat
beside me, remarking—
“_Giuraddio!_ I don’t want my place taken!”
Every one present was looking at him, and smiling compassionately.
Before he had finished unfolding his napkin he was already asking me—
“Are you Italian, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Been in Athens long?”
“A few days.”
“I have been here three months. Every one knows me.”
“I should think so, if you always make as much noise as that.”
“You see how they are looking at me?”
“I have noticed it.”
“I ... I suppose you know who I am?”
“I have not that honour.”
“I am the celebrated Spalletti.... You will know——”
“No. I confess my ignorance.”
“_Giuraddio!_ half the newspapers in the world have noticed me.”
“I read very few newspapers.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a journalist.”
“I am here. I have already given six representations of _Le Prophète_.”
“And you are——”
“The celebrated tenor, Spalletti.”
“Blessed be modesty!”
“Eh!—What?”
“Nothing—only a remark on my part. A fine opera, _Le Prophète_.”
“Yes—so they say!”
“How—they say? Have you never heard it?”
“I!—I have other things to do. I get through my scenes, and that’s
enough.”
“But have you not even read the words?”
“I have read my part,—and even that is too much. However, I think I will
read it over one evening when I am going to bed, because I want to know
who on earth this _Prophet_ is.”
Yet it was this very part of the Prophet which he had just enacted for
the sixth time!
He then told me that he had been engaged to sing in Thomas’s _Omeleto_—I
should not have been surprised had he said _omelette_—and left, after
telling me that he put up at the Gran Bretagna, and requesting me to
come and see him there.
At the door he turned back, and said—
“You must come and hear me at the theatre to-night! I am quite convinced
I shall make you shed tears.”
I went—and found that the worthy man was right. His performance was such
that it would have drawn tears from a stone.
I afterwards heard that the same gentleman had been asked to sing at a
charity concert, and, being told that in this way he would perform an
_act of philanthropy_, had replied that it was unfortunately impossible,
because he was not acquainted with the play of that name, and therefore
could not sing in any act of it.
_Napoleone Corazzini._
_RIVAL EARTHQUAKES._
There was a long-standing rivalry—and one that was not professional
alone—between the telegraph clerks of Pietranera and Golastretta. It is
said to have begun at the Technical College, when the former carried off
a silver medal hotly contested by the other; but this is not quite
certain.
What is certain is that Pippo Corradi could not undertake the smallest
thing but Nino d’Arco immediately proceeded to do likewise. Thus when
the former took a fancy to become an amateur conjurer, Nino at once went
in search of the necessary apparatus for amusing his friends with the
miracles of white magic. He was not a success; he raised many a laugh by
his want of skill; but this did not prevent him from throwing away more
money still on boxes with false bottoms, pistols to shoot playing cards
instead of balls, wonderful balls which multiply and grow larger in your
hands, and the like. Cost what it might, he was determined to astonish
his Golastretta friends, who extolled in his presence the portents they
had seen accomplished at Pietranera by Corradi, and derided him by way
of contrast.
Then when Pippo Corradi, who was of a strange fickleness in his tastes,
gave up white magic in order to devote himself to music, and the study
of the clarionet in particular, Nino d’Arco suddenly laid aside the
magic toys, which had already wearied him not a little, took music
lessons from the parish organist, bought a brand new ebony clarionet,
and rode over on a donkey to call on Corradi, under the pretext of
consulting him on his choice, but with the sole intention of humiliating
him. It was the only time he ever succeeded. He found him blowing into
the mouthpiece of a box-wood instrument, which he had bought second-hand
for a few francs from an old clarionet player in the town band. Nino
swelled visibly with satisfaction at seeing the admiration and envy in
his rival’s eyes when he opened the leather case and showed him the
polished keys of white metal, shining even more than the freshly
varnished wood.
[Illustration]
Nino put the instrument together delicately, and set it to his mouth,
thinking to astonish Pippo with a scale in semitones, but he unluckily
broke down in the middle. Then was Corradi able to take his revenge; and
not content with having played scales in all tones, major, minor,
diatonic, and chromatic, suddenly, without warning Nino, who kept
staring at his fingers manœuvring over the holes and keys, he dashed
point-blank into his _pièce-de-résistance_, _La Donna è Mobile_,
tootling away quite divinely, till checked by the imperative need of
taking breath. His eyes were nearly starting out of his head; his face
was purple—but that was nothing! He chuckled inwardly at Nino’s
crestfallen look; and the latter, taking his instrument to pieces, put
it back in the case, thus declaring himself vanquished.
[Illustration]
Nino, returning to Golastretta, vented his vexation on his ass, because
she would not go at a trot—just as though it had been she who taught
Corradi to play _La Donna è Mobile_. So true it is that passion renders
man unjust! He rushed at once to his master to learn _La Donna è Mobile_
for himself, so as to be able, in a short time, to play it before his
hated rival. The latter, however, had another great advantage, besides
that of being able to murder _Rigoletto_; he was the local post-master.
In this point it was useless trying to rival him, however much Nino
might dream of a spacious office, like that at Pietranera, where
Corradi, between the sale of one stamp and the next, between registering
a letter, and administering a reprimand to the postman, could divert
himself by blowing into his clarionet to his heart’s content! Whereas
he, Nino, was forced to escape from the house if he wished to practise
and remain at peace with his family! Corradi, in his post-office,
disturbed no one.
Nino did not know what a torment for the neighbourhood that clarionet
was, shrilling from morning to night, with Corradi’s usual obstinacy in
anything he undertook. The shopkeeper opposite, poor wretch, swore all
day long worse than a Turk, and did not know whether he was standing on
his head or his feet every time that Pippo began to repeat the _Donna è
Mobile_—that is to say, swore seven or eight times in the day. He made
mistakes in his weights, he counted his change wrong;—though it is only
fair to say that these errors were oftener in his own favour than in
that of his customers. And if by any chance he saw Corradi at the
window, he raised his hands towards him with a supplicating gesture,
pretending to be jocular.
“You want to make me die of a fit! Good Lord!”
Of all this Nino d’Arco was quite ignorant when he started for
Pietranera a month later, to surprise Corradi with _Mira Norma_, which
he had learnt, in addition to the air which first roused his emulation.
He found Pippo adding up his monthly accounts, and not disposed to talk
about music or anything else. The fact was that the shopkeeper opposite
had indeed fallen down dead in a fit at the third or fourth rendering of
_La Donna è Mobile_, as he had said, just as though he had had a
presentiment of what was to happen. The occurrence had such an effect on
Pippo that he felt as if he had killed the man, and could not bear to
touch the clarionet again. He would not even mention the subject. Nino
bit his lips and returned home, without having so much as opened his
clarionet case. Once more it was the ass who paid the penalty. He had to
relieve his feelings on some one or something.
If there were any need of an instance to prove that emulation is the
most powerful agent in the development of the human faculties, this one
would suffice. Seeing that Corradi had renounced the clarionet and all
its delights, Nino no longer felt the slightest inclination to go on
wasting his breath on his instrument, though it were of ebony, with keys
of white metal. As a faithful historian, I ought to add that for one
moment he was tempted by the idea of trying to attain to the glory of
causing some one’s death by a fit; but whether the Golastretta people
had harder tympanums than those of Pietranera, or whether he himself was
not possessed of the necessary strength and perseverance, certain it is
that no human victim fell to Nino d’Arco’s clarionet. And the fact of
having no death on his conscience made him feel degraded in his own eyes
for some time.
These had been the preludes to deeper and more difficult contests with
his old schoolfellow.
Golastretta was situated between the central office of the province and
the rival station of Pietranera; and thus it was Nino’s duty to signal
to his hated colleague the mean time by which he was to regulate his
clock—a supremacy which Corradi could never take from him. But this was
a joy of short duration.
Having very little to do, he was wont, after he had finished reading the
_Gazette_ or the last paper-covered novel, to snatch forty winks at his
ease in the office. One morning, when he least expected it, the machine
began clicking, and would not stop. It was his dear friend at Pietranera
who kept sending despatches on despatches, and would not let him drop
off comfortably.
By listening attentively, he soon made out what was the matter. The
village of Pietranera had begun, on the previous evening, to dance like
a man bitten by the tarantula, set in motion by earthquake-shocks
repeated from hour to hour. The Syndic was telegraphing to the
Vice-Prefect, the Prefect, the Meteorological Office of the province, in
the name of the terrified population. And Corradi, too, was telegraphing
on his own account, signalling the shocks as fast as they occurred, and
indicating their length, or the nature of the movement—in order to gain
credit with his superiors, said Nino d’Arco, vexed that Golastretta
should not have its half-dozen earthquakes as well.
How cruelly partial was Nature! Scarcely twenty kilomètres away she was
rendering Corradi an immense service with eight, ten, twenty
shocks—between day and night—within the week; and for him not even the
smallest vestige of any shock whatever. He could get no peace, and kept
his ear to the instrument.
One day, behold! there passed the announcement of a scientific
commission on its way to Pietranera in order to study these persistent
seismic phenomena. A few days later he became aware of the transit of
another despatch appointing the Pietranera telegraph-agent director of
the Meteorologico-Seismic station, which the commission had thought it
advisable to establish at that place. In a month from that time the
speedy arrival of a large number of scientific instruments was wired
down from headquarters.
Nino d’Arco could stand it no longer; nothing would serve but he must
go and see with his own eyes what under the canopy that
Meteorologico-Seismic Observatory could be which would not let him
live in peace.
He could not recover from the astonishment into which he was thrown by
the sight of all these machines already set up in position, whose
strange names Pippo Corradi reeled off with the greatest ease, as he
explained the working of each. Rain-gauge, wind-gauge, barometers,
maximum and minimum thermometers, hygrometers, and besides that a
tromometer, and all sorts of devilries for marking the very slightest
shocks of earthquake, indicating their nature, and recording the very
hour at which they occurred, by means of stop-watches.... Nino was very
far from understanding it all, but made believe to do so; and, at last,
he remained quite a time gazing through a magnifying-glass at the
pendulum constructed to register the movements of the earthquake by
marking them with a sharp point on a sheet of smoked glass placed
beneath it.... The pendulum was at that moment moving, sometimes from
right to left, sometimes backwards and forwards, but with so
imperceptible a movement that it could not be discerned by the naked
eye.... Suddenly—_drin! drin!_—there is a ringing of bells, the pendulum
quivers....
“A shock!” And Pippo, triumphant, rushes to the telegraph instrument to
announce it.
“I did not feel anything!” said Nino d’Arco, white with terror.
And he hastened to go. But he was simply knocked to pieces by all those
machines and the satisfied air of his colleague. The latter already
signed himself “Director of the Meteorologico-Seismic Observatory at
Pietranera,” and seemed a great personage—reflected Nino—even to him,
who knew very well who he was, a telegraph clerk just like himself!
All along the homeward road, when he had finished settling accounts with
the ass, he ruminated over the hundreds of francs which all that
apparatus must have cost.... The seismographic pendulum, however, was
only worth eighteen.... He would like to have at least a pendulum....
What would he do with it when he had it? No one could tell; least of all
himself. But the pendulum kept vibrating in his brain all the week,
backwards and forwards, right and left, scratching the smoked glass at
every stroke. Nino seemed to himself to be always standing behind the
magnifying-glass, as he had done at Pietranera. It was a diabolical
persecution!
He had to humble himself before his detested colleague, in order to get
information, explanations and instruments; but after all, in the end,
the pendulum was there in its place, near the office window. It had cost
him nearly half his month’s salary. But what of that? Now, he too could
telegraph the most beautiful earthquakes, on occasion.
But just look at the perversity of things! That infamous pendulum—as if
on purpose to spite him—remained perfectly motionless, even if one
looked at it through the magnifying-glass. Nino, who passed whole days
ruining his eyes with that glass, anxious to observe the first trace of
movement, so as to signal it, and thus begin his competition with the
Pietranera observatory, ground his teeth with rage. Especially on the
days when his fortunate rival seemed to be mocking him with the ticking
of the messages which announced to the Provincial Office some little
shock recorded by the instruments at Pietranera. For an earthquake—a
real earthquake—Nino would have given, who can tell what? perhaps his
very soul. In the meantime he dreamt of earthquakes, often awaking
terrified in the night, uncertain whether it were a dream, or the shock
had really taken place; but the pendulum remained stern and immovable.
It was enough to drive the veriest saint desperate. Ah! Was that the
game? Did the earthquakes obstinately refuse to manifest themselves?
Well, he would invent them. After all, who could contradict him? And so
that unlucky parish, which had been for centuries quietly anchored to
the rocky mountain-side, began to perform in its turn—in the Reports of
the Meteorological Office at Rome—an intricate dance of shocks, slight
shocks, and approaches to shocks; there was no means of keeping it still
any longer. And as Nino could not forego the glory of showing his
friends the sheet where his name appeared in print beside those of
several famous men of science, the report spread through the country
that the mountain was moving, imperceptibly, and threatened to come down
in a landslip.
“Is it really true?” the most timid came to ask.
“True, indeed!” replied Nino solemnly, and pointed to the pendulum; but
he would allow no one to examine it at close quarters.
Just as though it had been done on purpose, the Pietranera observatory
no longer signalled any disturbances since Golastretta had begun to
amuse itself by frequent vibrations; and Pippo Corradi, suspecting the
trick of his colleague, was gnawing his own heart out over all the false
indications which were quietly being foisted in among the genuine ones
of the official report, and making a mock of Science.
He, for his own part, did his work seriously and scrupulously, even
leaving his dinner when the hour for observation came; and his reports
might be called models of scientific accuracy. Ought he to denounce his
colleague? to unmask him? He could not make up his mind. The latter, as
bold as brass, went on making his village quake and tremble, as though
it were nothing at all.
This time the proverb that “lies have short legs” did not hold good; for
the lies in question reached Tacchini at Rome, and Father Denza at
Moncalieri. Perhaps, even, they confused the calculations of those
unfortunate scientists, who were very far from suspecting, in the
remotest degree, the wickedness of Nino.
But one day, all of a sudden, the Golastretta pendulum awoke from its
torpor, and began to move behind the magnifying-glass, although to the
naked eye its motion was scarcely perceptible.
Nino gave a howl of joy. “At last! at last!”
[Illustration]
To the first person who happened to come into the office he said, with a
majestic sweep of the arm, “Look here!”
“What does it mean?”
“We shall have a big earthquake!” and he rubbed his hands.
“Mercy!”
The man, who had felt his head turning round with the continued
agitation of the pendulum, and was struck with consternation to find
that it could scarcely be perceived without the magnifier, rushed at
once to spread the terrible news in streets, shops, and _cafés_. In an
hour the telegraph office was invaded—besieged. Everybody wished to see
with his or her own eyes, so as to be certain, and then take a
resolution. And the people who had seen frightened the others with their
accounts, exaggerating matters, giving explanations more terrifying than
those they had received and half understood, and so increasing the
panic, which now began to seize on the most sceptical spirits. An
extraordinary success for Nino d’Arco! He seemed to see before him the
image of his colleague, jaundiced with envy, and again rubbed his hands
with delight. Outside, the street was full of people discussing the
affair with comments. Women were crying, boys shouting, “Is it still
moving?” “Worse than before.” “Oh! blessed Madonna!” The parish priest
hastened to the spot, frightened as badly as the rest by the news which
had been carried to him by the sacristan; and scarcely had he looked
through the glass than he sprang from his chair as if he had felt the
ground rocking under his feet.
“It is the judgment of God, gentlemen! On account of our sins,
gentlemen!”
Then the people began to get away as fast as they could.
There was a banging of shutters, a hurried closing of doors, a rushing
about, a shouting of each other’s names. “Is it still moving?” “Worse
than ever!” So that at last Nino d’Arco himself no longer felt easy. And
from time to time he turned back to look once more at the pendulum,
which continued to vibrate. It was the first time that Nino found
himself indeed, as it were, face to face with a distant indication of
earthquake, after the hundred or so of shocks, of all sorts, strengths,
and sizes, which he had invented and caused to be published in the
Report at Rome. And now it was not exactly an amusing thing—that dumb
menace, to which his ignorance gave a false significance. Pendulum of
the devil! Would it never be still? A beautiful invention of science,
calculated to kill a peaceful citizen with anticipatory fear! Who ever
heard of the earth being shaken without people becoming aware of it?
It seemed to him that the vibrations increased from hour to hour, and
that the danger of a general fall of buildings became more imminent
every minute. He was alone in the office,—there was not a soul to be
seen in the street,—every one had left the village, to seek safety in
the open plain. And his duty, as telegraph operator, forbade him to
move!