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Scala was a meritorious public servant, and, moreover, a lucky man naturally exasperating to an offended scholar; but then O beautiful balance of things! he had an itch for authorship, and was a bad writer one of those excellent people who, sitting in gouty slippers, "penned poetical trifles" entirely for their own amusement, without any view to an audience, and, consequently, sent them to their friends in letters, which were the literary periodicals of the fifteenth century.
We begged off from this and that, but even indolence like mine would not spare itself the sight of the Scala Santa. That was another of the things which I distinctly remembered from the year 1864, and I did not find the spectacle of the modern penitents covering the holy steps different in 1908.
"We I " began Salvani, stammering. "My dear impresario," interrupted La Luciola, laughing, "let us make short work of it. I will tell you why I came, and, in the meantime, you can collect your thoughts. Well, then, I am growing tired at La Scala; Donizetti, Bellini, and whatever other names your great composers bear, are very good fellows, but, you know, toujours perdrix."
The combined sounds of creaking wheels, of falling water and of human chattering are almost deafening within this narrow echo-filled gorge, above which in the far distance we catch a glimpse of rocky heights with the town of Scala perched eyrie-like against the deep blue of the sky overhead.
Still, we will not omit to mention, with credit, that this anticipatory historiography has discreetly disappeared from the geological scala of the following editions of his "Natural History of Creation."
The official part of his visit being terminated, the colonel addressed some questions to the duchess concerning the night of the famous Fifteenth at La Scala. He was an amateur, and spoke with enthusiasm of the reports of the new prima donna.
He would have been great ah, great if he had not lost his voice in an expedition to your terrible England! So he stayed there and played the violon, did he? And he taught you to sing with your mouth round and close like that my own method! La, la, la, la! We shall see you at La Scala before we have done!"
And in gratitude for the vigour with which the Amalfitani had waged war against the infidel invaders, Pope Leo IV. in course of time conferred upon the Duke or Doge, the chief magistrate of the Republic, the title of “Defender of the Faith.” Nominally under the suzerainty of the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, Amalfi was practically independent; its system of government was conducted on lines somewhat akin to those of aristocratic Venice; its population is said to have exceeded fifty thousand in the capital city alone; its boundaries extended from the Promontory of Minerva on the west to the town of Cetara upon the confines of Salerno; whilst many daughter-towns of wealth and importance, such as Scala and Ravello, sprang into being within the narrow limits of the sea-girt republic.
The Emperor remained a long while with the vicequeen, whose intelligence equaled her amiability and her beauty, but returned to Milan to dine; and immediately afterwards the ladies who were received at court were presented to him. In the evening, I followed his Majesty to the theater of la Scala.
The stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke's Hospital in the Old-street- road, London.
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