CHAPTER III

The Impresario’s Report

It has been said that Signor Ercole Stadione, when he was first introduced to the reader under circumstances somewhat unfavourable to that dignity of appearance and deportment on which he specially prided himself, presented the appearance of a round mass some five feet in diameter.  And it may be thence concluded, that when reduced to the proportions familiar to the citizens of Ravenna, his utmost longitudinal dimensions did not exceed that measure.  The impresario was in truth a very small man, weighing perhaps seven stone with his boots.  But Signor Ercole held, and very frequently expressed, an opinion that dignity and nobility of appearance depended wholly on bearing, and in no wise on mere corporeal altitude.  Men were measured in his country (Rome), he said, from the eyebrow upwards.  And though Rome is not exactly the place, of all others, where one might expect to find such an estimate of human value prevailing,—­ unless, indeed, smallness of that which a man has above his brow be deemed the desirable thing,—­it was undeniable that little Signor Ercole carried a mass of forehead which might have been the share of a much taller man.

Nor were the pretensions put forward by the impresario on this score altogether vain.  He was no fool;—­a shrewd as well as a dapper little man, active and clever at his business, and well liked both by the artists and by the public, for which he catered, despite of being one of the vainest of mortals.  Vanity makes some men very odious to their fellows;—­in others it is perfectly inoffensive; and though damaging to a claim to respect, is perfectly compatible with a considerable amount of liking for the victim of it.

A very dapper little man was Signor Ercole, as he stepped forth, about eight o’clock, entirely refitted, to wait upon the Marchese at the Palazzo Castelmare.  He was dressed in complete black, somewhat threadbare, but scrupulously brushed.  He had a large frill at the bosom of his shirt, and more frills around the wristbands of it; one or two rings of immense size and weight on his small fingers; boots with heels two inches high, and a rather long frock-coat buttoned closely round his little body.  Signor Ercole had never been known to wear a swallow-tailed coat on any occasion.  And spiteful people told each other, that his motive for never quitting the greater shelter of the frock was to be found in his fear of exhibiting to the unkindly glances of the world a pair of knock-knees of rare perfection.

When his toilet was completed, he threw over all a handsome black cloth cloak turned up with a broad border of velvet, which he draped around his person with the air of an Apollo, throwing the corner of the garment round the lower part of his face and over his shoulder, in a manner wholly unattainable by any man born on the northern side of the Alps; and kindly telling Marta that he would take the key, and that she had better not sit up for him in the cold, stepped forth on his errand.