On the dining-room table one evening lay a little printed bill, which made known that a dramatic company was then in the town.

Their entertainment consisted of two parts, the first entitled: "The Death of Agolante and the Madness of Count Orlando"; the second: "A Delightful Comedy, the Devil's Castle with Pulcinella as the Timorous Soldier." In addition were promised "new duets and Neapolitan songs." The theatre would comfortably seat three hundred persons, and the performance would be given twice, at half-past eighteen and half-past twenty-one o'clock.

It was unpardonable in me that I did not seek out the Teatro delle Varieta; I might easily have been in my seat (with thirty, more likely than three hundred, other spectators) by half-past twenty-one.

But the night was forbidding; a cold rain fell heavily.

Moreover, just as I had thought that it was perhaps worth while to run the risk of another illness--one cannot see the Madness of Count Orlando every day--there came into the room a peddler laden with some fifty volumes of fiction and a fine assortment of combs and shirt-studs.