As I sat with my eyes drooping before the gaze of my terrible
and applauding audiences, how I mentally formed cursing words
against the day when my misfortunes led me to apply at the
Theatre Folie-Rouge for work! I had expected an audition and a
role of comedy in the Revue; for, perhaps lacking any experience
of the stage, I am a Neapolitan by birth, though a resident of
the Continent at large since the age of fifteen. All Neapolitans
can act; all are actors; comedians of the greatest, as every
traveller is cognizant. There is a thing in the air of our
beautiful slopes which makes the people of a great instinctive
musicalness and deceptiveness, with passions like those burning
in the old mountain we have there. They are ready to play, to
sing--or to explode, yet, imitating that amusing Vesuvio, they
never do this last when you are in expectancy, or, as a
spectator, hopeful of it.

How could any person wonder, then, that I, finding myself
suddenly destitute in Paris, should apply at the theatres? One
after another, I saw myself no farther than the director's door,
until (having had no more to eat the day preceding than three
green almonds, which I took from a cart while the good female
was not looking) I reached the Folie-Rouge. Here I was
astonished to find a polite reception from the director. It
eventuated that they wished for a person appearing like myself
a person whom they would outfit with clothes of quality in
all parts, whose external presented a gentleman of the great
world, not merely of one the galant-uomini, but who would impart
an air to a table at a cafe' where he might sit and partake. The
contrast of this with the emplacement of the establishment on
his bald head-top was to be the success of the idea. It was