Military life in Italy : sketches - Societa italiana di storia militare

AT TWENTY.
2gi
lant). But that pianist was so extraordinary that we stopped
as soon as he began. Never in the world had the passion
for music been planted in such a disharmonious brain. To
hear him play, it seemed as if he were jumping all equipped,
and with his baggage to boot, upon the key-board. Yet,
despite all this, he was possessed with the idea of composition
; he degraded counterpoint, searched for a libretto,
and among his other fixed fancies, was the desire to set
to music the Orlando Furwso, upon
which he said he had
been working for three years. One day he brought a musicmaster
home in order to ask his opinion about a mazurka,
and the latter's sole reply was to ask in a weak voice for a glass
of brandy, which of course gave us food for merriment. But
our imperturbable friend continued to compose and pound
away on the piano in all his spare moments, singing his romances
in a voice strongly resembling a rusty lock that made
one's flesh creep. But he did not attempt this sort of thing
at night, however, as, having endeavored to enliven our dreams
once with the Casta Diva, there was such a shower of slippers
and boots in his room, that the following morning
really a leather carpet over the floor.
there was
But the jolliest, and at the same time the most heedless
fellow of the lot, was a man from Romagna, a certain Mazzoni,
with a "
huge frame, who, upon sitting down to table, said : I
am hungry," in such a deep voice, which apparently came from
some unknown depth, that the poor caterer fairly paled.
And,
in fact, it was only the hunger of a trombone-player after a
seven hours' concert, of an Esquimaux after a seal-hunt, or a
lion who had been fasting for three days, that could be compared
to the fury with which he cleared the table.
His dinner