The shabbiness of the _façade_ and of the box-office, and of the suits of the disillusioned but genial men within the box-office--men who knew the full meaning of existence. A seat in the _parterre_ for two lire--say one and sevenpence halfpenny--it is making a gift of the spectacle! The men take my two lire with an indulgent gesture, exclaiming softly with their eyes and hands: “What are two lire more or less in the vast abyss of our deficit? Throw them down!” Then I observe that my ticket is marked _posto distinto_--prominent seat, distinguished seat. Useless to tell me that it means nothing! It means much to me: another example of Italian politeness, at once exquisite and futile.
Would the earl in the gate at Covent Garden, even for thirty-two lire on a Melba night, offer me a distinguished seat?.. . Long stone corridors, steps up, steps down, turnings, directive cries echoing amid arches; and then I am in the auditorium, vast.
It is as big as Covent Garden, and nearly as big as La Scala. It has six galleries, about a hundred boxes, and four varieties of seats on the ground floor. My distinguished seat is without the first quality of a seat--yieldingness. It does not acquiesce. It is as hard as seasoned wood can be, though roomy and well situated. And in a corner, lying against the high rampart of a box for ten people, I see negligently piled a great pyramid of ancient red cushions, scores and scores of them. And a little old ragged attendant comes and whispers alluringly, delicately in my ear: “_Cuscina_.” Two sous would hire it and a smile thrown in. But no, I won’t have it. I am too English to have that cushion.. . . The immense theatre, faced all in white marble, with traces here and there in a box of crimson upholstery, is as dim as a church. There are hundreds of electric bulbs, but unlighted: the sole illumination comes from a row of perfectly mediæval gas-burners along the first gallery. After all, economy must obtain somewhere. I count an orchestra of over seventy living players; the most numerous body in the place: somehow they must support life. Over the acreage of the _parterre_ are sprinkled a few dozens of audience. There is a serried ring of faces lining the fifth gallery, to which admittance is tenpence, and another lining the sixth gallery, to which admittance is sixpence. The rest is not even paper.