brought him up from a little child, and taught him Latin, and would
have made a philosopher of him. What could I do? He had so much voice
that he did not know what to do with it.

His mother used to sing. What a piece of a woman she was! She had a
voice like a man's, and when De Pretis brought his singers to the
festa once upon a time, when I was young, he heard her far down below,
as we walked on the terrace of the palazzo, and asked me if I would
not let him educate that young tenor. And when I told him it was one
of the contadine, the wife of a tenant of mine, he would not believe
it. But I never heard her sing after Serafino--that was her
husband--was killed at the fair in Genazzano. And one day the fevers
took her, and so she died, leaving Nino a little baby. Then you know
what happened to me, about that time, and how I sold Castel Serveti
and came to live here in Rome. Nino was brought to me here. One day in
the autumn a carrettiere from Serveti, who would sometimes stop at my
door and leave me a basket of grapes in the vintage, or a pitcher of
fresh oil in winter, because he never used to pay his house-rent when
I was his landlord--but he is a good fellow, Gigi--and so he tries to
make amends now; well, as I was saying, he came one day and gave me a
great basket of fine grapes, and he brought Nino with him, a little
boy of scarce six years--just to show him to me, he said.

He was an ugly little boy, with a hat of no particular shape and a
dirty face. He had great black eyes, with ink-saucers under them,
_calamai_, as we say, just as he has now. Only the eyes are bigger
now, and the circles deeper. But he is still sufficiently ugly. If it
were not for his figure, which is pretty good, he could never have
made a fortune with his voice. De Pretis says he could, but I do not
believe it.