_Aooo!_" He moved his whip like a fishing rod over the upright plume, increasing the steed's pace with a professional howl....

And as though his cry were among the sweetest of melodies, he continued talking, by association of ideas: "At the fiesta of _Piedigrotta_, when I was a boy, were given out the best songs of the year.

There was proclaimed the latest fashionable love song, and long after we had forgotten it foreigners would come here repeating it as though it was a novelty." He made a short pause.
"If the lady and gentleman wish," he continued, "I will take them, on returning, to _Piedigrotta_.

Then we'll see the little church of _S.
Vitale_.

Many foreign ladies hunt for it in order to put flowers on the sepulcher of a hunch-back who made verses,--Giacomo Leopardi." The silence with which his two clients received these explanations made him abandon his mechanical oratory in order to take a good look at them.