While these men were shouting, there came along an ugly old woman with a tambourine and a one-legged man with a guitar, and seeing prey in the shape of Caper at his window, they pounced on him, as it were, and poured forth the most ear-rending discord; the old lady singing, the old gentleman backing up against a wall and scratching at an accompaniment on a jangling old guitar.  The old lady had a bandana handkerchief tied over her head, and whilst she watched Caper she cast glances up and down the street, to see if some rich stranger, or milordo, was not coming to throw her a piece of silver.

‘What are you howling about?’ shouted Caper down to her.

’A new Neapolitan canzonetta, signore; all about a young man who grieves for his sweetheart, because he thinks she is not true to him, and what he says to her in a serenade.’  And here she screechingly sung,—­

  But do not rage, I beg, my dear;
  I want you for my wife,
  And morning, noon, and night likewise,
  I’ll love you like my life.

  CHORUS.

  I only want to get a word,
  My charming girl, from thee. 
  You know, Ninella, I can’t breathe,
  Unless your heart’s for me!

‘Well,’ said Caper, ‘if this is Italian music, I don’t see it.’

The one-legged old gentleman clawed away at the strings of the guitar.

‘I say,’llustrissimo,’ shouted Caper down to him, ’what kind of strings are those on your instrument?’

‘Excellenza, catgut,’ he shouted, in answer.

’Benissimo! I prefer cats in the original packages.  There’s a paolo:  travel!’

Caper had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of a professor of the mandolin, a wire-strung instrument, resembling a long-necked squash cut in two, to be played on with a quill, and which, with a guitar and violin, makes a concert that thrills you to the bones and cuts the nerves away.

But the crowning glory of all that is ear-rending and peace-destroying, is carried around by the Pifferari about Christmas time.  It is a hog-skin, filled with wind, having pipes at one end, and a jackass at the other, and is known in some lands as the bagpipe.  The small shrines to the Virgin, particularly those in the streets where the wealthy English reside, are played upon assiduously by the pifferari, who are supposed by romantic travelers to come from the far-away Abbruzzi Mountains, and make a pilgrimage to the Eternal City to fulfil a vow to certain saints; whereas it is sundry cents they are really after.  They are for the most part artists’ models, who at this season of the year get themselves up a la pifferari, or piper, to prey on the romantic susceptibilities and pockets of the strangers in Rome, and, with a pair of long-haired goat-skin breeches, a sheepskin coat, brown rags, and sandals, or cioccie, with a shocking bad conical black or brown hat, in which are stuck peacock’s or cock’s feathers, they are ready equipped to attack the shrines and the strangers.