And now Don Antonio’s artistic feelings were hurt. He would not be forced to take back the blind men. He wished to have the people come to his theatre for his sake, and not for that of the musicians.
He changed his tactics and began to play big dramas with elaborate mountings. But it was futile.
There is a play called “The Death of the Paladin,” which treats of Roland’s fight at Ronceval. It requires so much machinery that a puppet theatre has to be kept shut for two days for it to be set up. It is so dear to the public that it is generally played for double price and to full houses for a whole month. Don Antonio now had that play mounted, but he did not need to play it; he had no spectators.
After that his spirit was broken. He tried to get Father Elia and Brother Tommaso back, but they now knew what their value was to him.
They demanded such a price that it would have been ruin to pay them. It was impossible to come to any agreement.
In the small rooms back of the marionette theatre they lived as in a besieged fortress. They had nothing else to do but to starve.
Donna Emilia and Don Antonio were both gay young people, but now they never laughed. They were in great want, but Don Antonio was a proud man, and he could not bear to think that his art no longer had the power to draw.
So, as I said, Donna Emilia went down to the church of San Pasquale to ask the saint for good advice. It had been her intention to repeat nine prayers to the great stone-image standing outside of the church, and then to go; but before she had begun to pray she had noticed that the church-door stood open. “Why is San Pasquale’s church-door open?” said Donna Emilia. “That has never happened in my time,”--and she went into the church.
The only thing to be seen there was Fra Felice’s beloved image and the big collection-box. The image looked so beautiful in his crown and his rings that Donna Emilia was tempted forward to him, but when she came near enough to look into his eyes, he seemed to her so tender and so cheering that she knelt down before him and prayed. She promised that if he would help her and Don Antonio in their need, she would put the receipts of a whole evening in the big box that hung beside him.