United States or Latvia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Drollo's hunger was of the chronic kind: it seemed impossible either to assuage it or to fill him. There was a gaunt leanness about him which I am satisfied no amount of food could ever fatten. I think he knew it too, and that accounted for his resignation. At length, just before sunset, the boat returned, floating up the river with the tide, old Bartolo steering and managing the brown sails.

The journey was uneventful; the descents were gradual; we saw San Bartolo long before we reached it; and, between it and us, there lay a valley, like a narrow gash, down which we had to go, and up the other side of which we had to climb. We passed Santa Maria, an insignificant town, just before reaching the edge of this gully.

The Count's amour propre is deeply wounded at the thought that his menials should outwit him and he fail of his conquest. He swears that he will be avenged upon both. Apparently he has not long to wait, for Marcellina, Don Curzio, and Bartolo enter, followed by Figaro. Don Curzio announces the decision of the court in the duenna's suit against Figaro. He must pay or marry, according to the bond.

Once more the secret is nearly out, but Figaro saves the situation by declaring that the page gave it to him to get the seal affixed. The Countess and Susanna are beginning to congratulate themselves on their escape, when another diversion is created by the entrance of Marcellina, the Countess's old duenna, and Bartolo, her ex-guardian.

COUNTESS ALMAVIVA Signora STORACE. SUSANNA Signora LASCHI. CHERUBINO Signora MANDINI. MARCELLINA Signora BUSSANI. BARBARINA Signora GOTTLIEB. COUNT ALMAVIVA Signor MANDINI. FIGARO Signor BENUCCI. BARTOLO Signor OCCHELEY. BASILIO Signor BUSSANI.

Bartolo in spite of his protests, and, contriving to get hold of the latter's keys, "conveys" the one which opens the balcony lock, and thus makes possible a plan for a midnight elopement.

Bartolo has never forgiven nor forgotten the part he played in robbing him of his ward Rosina. He comes now to let us know that he is seeking revenge against Figaro and at the same time, as he hopes, rid himself of his old housekeeper, Marcellina, to whom he is bound by an obligation that is becoming irksome.

Taddeo di Bartolo placed the Death of the Virgin among the curious undulations of pale clay and sandy marl that stretch to the southernmost gates of Siena; Signorelli was amused and fascinated by the odd cliffs and overhanging crags, unnatural and grotesque like some Druidic monument, of the valleys of the Paglia and the Chiana; and Pier della Francesca has left, in the allegorical triumphs of Frederick of Urbino and his duchess, studies most exquisite and correct, of what meets the traveller's eyes on the watersheds of the central Apennine, sharp-toothed lines of mountain peaks pale against the sky, dim distant whiteness of sea, and valleys and roads and torrents twisting intricately as on a map.

Have you not seen papers that were taken with your child to confirm it all, and did you not send this signet as a gage that Bartolo should not want your aid, in any strait that might occur in his wild manner of living, when you learned that he resolutely preferred remaining what he was, to becoming an image of sickly repentance and newly-assumed nobility, in your gorgeous palace on the Strada Balbi?"

In short, there are seen many other works by the hand of Bartolo in those parts.