Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/259

 The originator of this enterprise was a certain Nicolo Musso, who caused to be represented, during the Carnival, impromptu pantomimes. The location which served for the exercise of his industry did not announce a very brilliant state of finances; there was only, in place of boxes and orchestra, a circular gallery which bore, on the exterior, the representation of count Colanna's arms, the protector of Nicolo Musso. The stage was a kind of scaffolding covered with boards and ornamented with old carpets. The partitions were decorated, by turns, with strips of painted paper which represented, according to the necessities, a forest, an apartment, or a street. For seats, the spectators had to content themselves with hard and narrow benches; so that the public in the theatre made more noise than it brought in money. For the rest, nothing could be seen more amusing than these joyous parodies, in which Nicolo Musso was the prime mover; it was a running fire, well sustained, of epigrams against all the vices, all the defects, all the singularities and all that was ridiculous in society. Every actor gave to his part its broadest physiognomy. But Pasquarello, official clown, bore off the applause by his caustic witicisms [sic], and the originality of his pantomime, which reproduced, so as perfectly to deceive, the voice, the form and the movements of people well known in the city. The individual who played this part of critic, and who was called amongst the people Signor Formica, was a phenomenon. There was in his talent for mimicry such an elasticity, his voice sometimes took such strange inflections, that one could hardly refrain from shuddering, and at the same time yield to the maddest bursts of laughter. At the side of this personage figured, as habitual companion, a certain doctor Graziano, whose part was played by an old circus rider of Bologna, named Maria Agli.

The fashionable society of Rome did not disdain the comic representations of Nicolo Musso. The theatre of the People's Gate was always well filled, and Formica's name was in every one's mouth. What contributed not a little to augment the