Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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THE OLD MARTYRDOM 27
fession. And Don Antonio understands his art.
He can change his voice indefinitely; he can
manoeuvre at the same time a whole army of dolls; and he
knows by heart the whole cycle of plays founded on
the chronicles of Charlemagne.
And now Don Antonio’s artistic feelings were hurt.
He would not be forced to take back the blind men.
He wished to have the people come to his theatre
for his sake, and not for that of the musicians.
He changed his tactics and began to play big
dramas with elaborate mountings. But it was futile.
There is a play called “ The Death of the Paladin,”
which treats of Roland’s fight at Ronceval. It
requires so much machinery that a puppet theatre
has to be kept shut for two days for it to be set up.
It is so dear to the public that it is generally played
for double price and to full houses for a whole month.
Don Antonio now had that play mounted, but he
did not need to play it; he had no spectators.
After that his spirit was broken. He tried to
get Father Elia and Brother Tommaso back, but
they now knew what their value was to him.
They demanded such a price that it would have
been ruin to pay them. It was impossible to come
to any agreement.
In the small rooms back of the marionette theatre
they lived as in a besieged fortress. They had
nothing else to do but to starve.
Donna Emilia and Don Antonio were both gay
young people, but now they never laughed. They
were in great want, but Don Antonio was a proud
man, and he could not bear to think that his art no
longer had the power to draw.
So, as I said, Donna Emilia went down to the
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