I gave them, first, the opening speech of the Orfeo of Politian, where the sad shepherd accounts his plight, his pursuit of the nymph Euridice, her abhorrence of him, and the like. All eyes were fixed upon me; I saw those of La Panormita glisten. The smooth-flowing verses moved her. They were silent when I had done, which a little disconcerted me; but presently the dwarf snapped out, "More." Emboldened, I began upon the Aminta of Tasso, reciting the opening speech of Daphne in the fourth act. To my delight the part of Silvia, which Virginia in our old days at Pistoja had been wont to take, was caught up and continued by Belviso. We fired each other, capped each other, and ended the great scene. The last six lines of it, to be spoken by the Choragus, were croaked by Il Nanno in his bull-frog's voice. We stopped amid a storm of bravas, and La Panormita, with a great gesture, crowned us with flowers. I was made free of the company by acclamation. Belviso set off early in the morning with his monstrous old wife of the occasion. He embraced me warmly before he left me. "Keep a good heart, Don Francis," he said, "and trust in your friends. All that is possible shall be done, you may be sure. I shan't dare to look you in the face if I come back without your Virginia." CHAPTER XXXV TEMPTED IN SIENA, BELVISO SAVES ME The company, of which I was now enrolled a member, moved on towards Siena, that city for which--as Aurelia's cradle--I had a feeling of profound reverence; towards which now, in spite of all that had occurred, I could not approach without a quickening of the pulse, an aching heart, and a longing mind. We travelled with a large caravan of donkeys and mules to carry the baggage and women--La Panormita, her gross old mother, and two hags, who called themselves the mothers, and were really the owners, of the boys. The rest of us, the men and the boys themselves, trudged afoot. We begged, jigged, or bullied for food as we went, having scarcely any money among us; for just now, after a disastrous week in Florence, the company was by way of starving until it could earn some pence-halfpence in Siena. The first night we slept in a rick-yard--a bitter wet night it was; the next, we reached Certaldo, and cajoled the landlord of the Ghirlanda out of house-room. This he only consented to upon the condition of our giving free entertainment then and there to his customers. We had been all day on the road; but what choice is open to the needy traveller? Footsore, muddy to the eyes, hungry, thirsty as we were--our clothes of the stage sodden with rain, our finery like wet weeds, our face-powder like mud and our paints like soup--we must perforce open our packs, don our chill motley, daub our weary faces, and caper through some piece of tomfoolery which, if it had not been so insipid, would have been grotesquely indecent. All I remember about it now is that it was called La Nuova Lucrezia ossia La