A Roman Singer

A free download from http://www.dertz.in


A Roman Singer

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Roman Singer, by F. Marion
Crawford This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: A Roman Singer
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release Date: May 14, 2004 [EBook #12346]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROMAN
SINGER ***

Produced by Paul Murray, Ari J Joki and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

A ROMAN SINGER
F. MARION CRAWFORD

1909

[Illustration: "Shut the door and double turned the lock."--Chap. XXI.]
CHAPTER I
I, Cornelio Grandi, who tell you these things, have a story of my own,
of which some of you are not ignorant. You know, for one thing, that I
was not always poor, nor always a professor of philosophy, nor a
scribbler of pedantic articles for a living. Many of you can remember
why I was driven to sell my patrimony, the dear castello in the Sabines,
with the good corn-land and the vineyards in the valley, and the olives,
too. For I am not old yet; at least, Mariuccia is older, as I often tell her.
These are queer times. It was not any fault of mine. But now that Nino
is growing to be a famous man in the world, and people are saying
good things and bad about him, and many say that he did wrong in this
matter, I think it best to tell you all the whole truth and what I think of
it. For Nino is just like a son to me; I brought him up from a little child,
and taught him Latin, and would have made a philosopher of him.
What could I do? He had so much voice that he did not know what to
do with it.
His mother used to sing. What a piece of a woman she was! She had a
voice like a man's, and when De Pretis brought his singers to the festa
once upon a time, when I was young, he heard her far down below, as
we walked on the terrace of the palazzo, and asked me if I would not let
him educate that young tenor. And when I told him it was one of the
contadine, the wife of a tenant of mine, he would not believe it. But I
never heard her sing after Serafino--that was her husband--was killed at
the fair in Genazzano. And one day the fevers took her, and so she died,
leaving Nino a little baby. Then you know what happened to me, about
that time, and how I sold Castel Serveti and came to live here in Rome.
Nino was brought to me here. One day in the autumn a carrettiere from
Serveti, who would sometimes stop at my door and leave me a basket
of grapes in the vintage, or a pitcher of fresh oil in winter, because he
never used to pay his house-rent when I was his landlord--but he is a

good fellow, Gigi--and so he tries to make amends now; well, as I was
saying, he came one day and gave me a great basket of fine grapes, and
he brought Nino with him, a little boy of scarce six years--just to show
him to me, he said.
He was an ugly little boy, with a hat of no particular shape and a dirty
face. He had great black eyes, with ink-saucers under them, calamai, as
we say, just as he has now. Only the eyes are bigger now, and the
circles deeper. But he is still sufficiently ugly. If it were not for his
figure, which is pretty good, he could never have made a fortune with
his voice. De Pretis says he could, but I do not believe it.
Well, I made Gigi come in with Nino, and Mariuccia made them each a
great slice of toasted bread and spread it with oil, and gave Gigi a glass
of the Serveti wine, and little Nino had some with water. And
Mariuccia begged to have the child left with her till Gigi went back the
next day; for she is fond of children and comes from Serveti herself.
And that is how Nino came to live with us. That old woman has no
principles of economy, and she likes children.
"What does a little creature like that eat?" said she. "A bit of bread, a
little soup--macchè! You will never notice it, I tell you. And the poor
thing has been living on