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What a night the poor boy spent over those drinking songs, writing by the light of the tall wax candles while the priest recited the prayers for the dead! Morning broke before the last song was finished. Lucien tried it over to a street-song of the day, to the consternation of Berenice and the priest, who thought that he was mad:
And as I nodded, with forehead propped on my left hand, and the packet of pemmican cakes in my right, there was in my head, somehow, an old street-song of my childhood: and I groaned it sleepily, like coronachs and drear funereal nenias, dirging; and the packet beat time in my right hand, falling and raising, falling heavily and rising, in time.
I would think, as I watched him leaving my hotel with a couple of his boon companions, staggering and laughing loudly as he went, or singing the last questionable street-song of the Neapolitan bas-peuple. "You are in a would-be riotous and savage mood her finer animal instincts will revolt from you, as a lithe gazelle would fly from the hideous gambols of a rhinoceros.
Still puffing at his cigarette, he proceeded to turn over the sketches, drawings, and rough drafts that he kept in a large old closet; but, soon becoming disgusted with this vain quest, and feeling depressed by the lassitude of his spirits, he tossed away his cigarette, whistled a popular street-song, bent down and picked up a heavy dumb-bell that lay under a chair.
"Do you want to go to jail, Lot?" he said, more kindly. "It's orful cold out to-night." "No. Let me go." She went through the crowd out into the vacant street, down to the wharf, humming some street-song, from habit, it seemed; sat down on a pile of lumber, picking the clay out of the holes in her shoes.
Only long practice in self-control could have kept Giovanni from starting. The rhyme was a common street-song which every lad in Milan, the city of puppet-shows, would recognize, and not only did it refer to the puppets as "fantoccini" instead of marionettes, but the significance of the last two lines, "Each for himself and the fiend for all," was rather too pointed to be pleasant.
The verse is a playful bit, between psalm and street-song. It relates that when Saint John was baptising on the banks of Jordan there came to him a lady from Nuremberg bringing her little son for baptism. When she got home, however, to German land, it proved that vainly had one on the banks of Jordan been given the name of Johannes, on the banks of the Pegnitz he became Hans!
I saw Madame Fosco, who was making the tea, pause, with the sugar-tongs in her hand, to listen for my answer. "No, Count, thank you. No letters to-day." He gave the bag to the servant, who was then in the room; sat down at the piano, and played the air of the lively Neapolitan street-song, "La mia Carolina," twice over.
Adieu the fragrant orange grove, the scented air that breathes of love Shall charm my heart with one bright ray, in dreams, wher'er I stray; Oh, adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee! Adieu each soul-felt memory, of happy days long passed away! The old street-song of Italy, the song of its people, never held a stranger audience in thraldom.
What a night the poor boy spent over those drinking songs, writing by the light of the tall wax candles while the priest recited the prayers for the dead! Morning broke before the last song was finished. Lucien tried it over to a street-song of the day, to the consternation of Berenice and the priest, who thought that he was mad: