A Roman Singer | Page 5

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 reconciled, after all, to his not
having become a philosopher. He would never have been so famous as
he is now, and he really knows so much more than Maestro De

Pretis--in other ways than music--that he is very presentable indeed.
What is blood, nowadays? What difference does it make to society
whether Nino Cardegna, the tenor was the son of a vine-dresser? Or
what does the University care for the fact that I, Cornelio Grandi, am
the last of a race as old as the Colonnas, and quite as honourable? What
does Mariuccia care? What does anybody care? Corpo di Bacco! if we
begin talking of race we shall waste as much time as would make us all
great celebrities! I am not a celebrity--I never shall be now, for a man
must begin at that trade young. It is a profession--being celebrated--and
it has its signal advantages. Nino will tell you so, and he has tried it.
But one must begin young, very young! I cannot begin again.
And then, as you all know, I never began at all. I took up life in the
middle, and am trying hard to twist a rope of which I never held the
other end. I feel sometimes as though it must be the life of another that
I have taken, leaving my own unfinished, for I was never meant to be a
professor. That is the way of it; and if I am sad and inclined to
melancholy humours, it is because I miss my old self, and he seems to
have left me without even a kindly word at parting. I was fond of my
old self, but I did not respect him much. And my present self I respect,
without fondness. Is that metaphysics? Who knows? It is vanity in
either case, and the vanity of self-respect is perhaps a more dangerous
thing than the vanity of self-love, though you may call it pride if you
like, or give it any other high-sounding title. But the heart of the vain
man is lighter than the heart of the proud. Probably Nino has always
had much self-respect, but I doubt if it has made him very happy--until
lately. True, he has genius, and does what he must by nature do or die,
whereas I have not even talent, and I make myself do for a living what I
can never do well. What does it serve, to make comparisons? I could
never have been like Nino, though I believe half my pleasure of late has
been in fancying how I should feel in his place, and living through his
triumphs by my imagination. Nino began at the very beginning, and
when all his capital was one shoe and a ragged hat, and certainly not
more than a third of a shirt, he said he would be a great singer; and he
is, though he is scarcely of age yet. I wish it had been something else
than a singer, but since he is the first already, it was worth while. He
would have been great in anything, though, for he has such a square

jaw, and he looks so fierce when anything needs to be overcome. Our
forefathers must have looked like that, with their broad eagle noses and
iron mouths. They began at the beginning, too, and they went to the
very end. I wish Nino had been a general, or a statesman, or a cardinal,
or all three like Richelieu.
But you want to hear of Nino, and you can pass on your ways, all of
you, without hearing my reflections and small-talk about goodness, and
success, and the like. Moreover, since I respect myself now, I must not
find so much fault with my own doings, or you will say that I am in my
dotage. And, truly, Nino Cardegna is a better man, for all his peasant
blood, than I ever was; a better lover, and perhaps a better hater. There
is his guitar, that he always leaves here, and it