A Roman Singer | Page 4

but it gave me a queer sensation that I liked--it was so true, and
young, and clear. De Pretis sat open-mouthed with astonishment and
admiration. When the boy had finished, he stood looking at the maestro,
blushing very scarlet, and altogether ashamed of himself. The other did
not speak.
"Excuse me," said Nino, "I cannot sing. I have not sung for a long time.
I know it is not worth anything." De Pretis recovered himself.
"You do not sing," said he, "because you have not learned. But you can.
If you will let me teach you, I will do it for nothing."

"Me!" screamed Nino, "you teach me! Ah, if it were any use--if you
only would!"
"Any use?" repeated De Pretis half aloud, as he bit his long black cigar
half through in his excitement. "Any use? My dear boy, do you know
that you have a very good voice? A remarkable voice," he continued,
carried away by his admiration, "such a voice as I have never heard.
You can be the first tenor of your age, if you please--in three years you
will sing anything you like, and go to London and Paris, and be a great
man. Leave it to me."
I protested that it was all nonsense, that Nino was meant for a scholar
and not for the stage, and I was quite angry with De Pretis for putting
such ideas into the boy's head. But it was of no use. You cannot argue
with women and singers, and they always get their own way in the end.
And whether I liked it or not, Nino began to go to Sor Ercole's house
once or twice a week, and sang scales and exercises very patiently, and
copied music in the evening, because he said he would not be
dependent on me, since he could not follow my wishes in choosing a
profession. De Pretis did not praise him much to his face after they had
begun to study, but he felt sure he would succeed.
"Caro Conte,"--he often calls me Count, though I am only plain
Professore, now--"he has a voice like a trumpet and the patience of all
the angels. He will be a great singer."
"Well, it is not my fault," I used to answer; for what could I do?
When you see Nino now, you cannot imagine that he was ever a dirty
little boy from the mountains, with one shoe, and that infamous little
hat. I think he is ugly still, though you do not think so when he is
singing, and he has good strong limbs and broad shoulders, and carries
himself like a soldier. Besides, he is always very well dressed, though
he has no affectations. He does not wear 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 caffè.
"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