Dear Heaven, how Adelaida wept, her voice plashing like violin music, at
my ruthless, masculine cruelty. Dear heart, how she sighed to rest on my
sheltering bosom! And how I enjoyed my dual nature! How I
admired myself!
Adelaida chose _La Moglie del Dottore_ for her Evening of Honour. During
the following week came a little storm of coloured bills: 'Great Evening
of Honour of Enrico Persevalli.'
This is the leader, the actor-manager. What should he choose for his
great occasion, this broad, thick-set, ruddy descendant of the peasant
proprietors of the plain? No one knew. The title of the play was
not revealed.
So we were staying at home, it was cold and wet. But the maestra came
inflammably on that Thursday evening, and were we not going to the
theatre, to see _Amleto_?
Poor maestra, she is yellow and bitter-skinned, near fifty, but her dark
eyes are still corrosively inflammable. She was engaged to a lieutenant
in the cavalry, who got drowned when she was twenty-one. Since then she
has hung on the tree unripe, growing yellow and bitter-skinned, never
developing.
'_Amleto!_' I say.
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