As an Italian, he would not willingly touch it. It was
unclean. But he looked a fool, hulking himself in his lugubriousness. He
was as self-important as D'Annunzio.
The close fell flat. The peasants had applauded the whole graveyard
scene wildly. But at the end of all they got up and crowded to the
doors, as if to hurry away: this in spite of Enrico's final feat: he
fell backwards, smack down three steps of the throne platform, on to the
stage. But planks and braced muscle will bounce, and Signer Amleto
bounced quite high again.
It was the end of _Amleto_, and I was glad. But I loved the theatre, I
loved to look down on the peasants, who were so absorbed. At the end of
the scenes the men pushed back their black hats, and rubbed their hair
across their brows with a pleased, excited movement. And the women
stirred in their seats.
Just one man was with his wife and child, and he was of the same race as
my old woman at San Tommaso. He was fair, thin, and clear, abstract, of
the mountains. He seemed to have gathered his wife and child together
into another, finer atmosphere, like the air of the mountains, and to
guard them in it.
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