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 caffe.

“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 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.