It was enough to make one laugh, for he was only seven years old, and ugly too.  But Mariuccia, who was knitting in the hall-way, called out that it was just what Maestro Ercole had sung the day before at vespers, every syllable.

I have an old piano in my sitting-room.  It is a masterpiece of an instrument, I can tell you; for one of the legs is gone and I propped it up with two empty boxes, and the keys are all black except those that have lost the ivory—­and those are green.  It has also five pedals, disposed as a harp underneath; but none of them make any impression on the sound, except the middle one, which rings a bell.  The sound-board has a crack in it somewhere, Nino says, and two of the notes are dumb since the great German maestro came home with my boy one night, and insisted on playing an accompaniment after supper.  We had stewed chickens and a flask of Cesanese, I remember, and I knew something would happen to the piano.  But Nino would never have any other, for De Pretis had a very good one; and Nino studies without anything—­just a common tuning-fork that he carries in his pocket.  But the old piano was the beginning of his fame.  He got into the sitting-room one day, by himself, and found out that he could make a noise by striking the keys, and then he discovered that he could make tunes, and pick out the ones that were always ringing in his head.  After that he could hardly be dragged away from it, so that I sent him to school to have some quiet in the house.

He was a clever boy, and I taught him Latin and gave him our poets to read; and as he grew up I would have made a scholar of him, but he would not.  At least, he was willing to learn and to read; but he was always singing too.  Once I caught him declaiming “Arma virumque cano” to an air from Trovatore, and I knew he could never be a scholar then, though he might know a great deal.  Besides, he always preferred Dante to Virgil, and Leopardi to Horace.

One day, when he was sixteen or thereabouts, he was making a noise, as usual, shouting some motive or other to Mariuccia and the cat, while I was labouring to collect my senses over a lecture I had to prepare.  Suddenly his voice cracked horribly and his singing ended in a sort of groan.  It happened again once or twice, the next day, and then the house was quiet.  I found him at night asleep over the old piano, his eyes all wet with tears.

“What is the matter, Nino?” I asked.  “It is time for youngsters like you to be in bed.”

“Ah, Messer Cornelio,” he said, when he was awake, “I had better go to bed, as you say.  I shall never sing again, for my voice is all broken to pieces”; and he sobbed bitterly.

“The saints be praised,” thought I; “I shall make a philosopher of you yet!”

But he would not be comforted, and for several months he went about as if he were trying to find the moon, as we say; and though he read his books and made progress, he was always sad and wretched, and grew much thinner, so that Mariuccia said he was consuming himself, and I thought he must be in love.  But the house was very quiet.