430 IL BANCOLO. 
his appearance! This evening he will bid us adieu for ever. The 
loss sustained by France and Italy is greater than words have power 
to express. The retreat of Polichinelle is a national calamity ; for, 
as a land of heroes and artists, Italy is no more ! 
Accents of grief are heard on all sides: still, females might be 
seen to smile under the slender covering of their veils. Streams of 
melody flowed from an orchestra worthy to accompany a choir of 
angels, or to regulate the revolutions of the spheres. Ices and the 
most delicious drinks were served up by Ethiopian attendants ; 
flowers were strewed on every side, and falling on the shoulders of 
the young military officers, added to the lustre of their golden epau- 
lettes and brilliant uniforms. 
Bancolo surpassed even himself, now exciting his audience to a 
roar of merriment, and now melting them to tears. The thea- 
tre resounded with the applause of twenty thousand voices, and cries 
of “ Bravo, bravo, bravissimo per Bacho!” were echoed from side to 
side. In another moment every face was suffused with tears ; a deep 
silence then pervaded the assembly, broken only by sobs. 
The females, whose forms were covered with thin veils, viewed 
from above, resembled those embalmed beauties, the daughters of 
kings, who sleep in silence in the deep caverns of the pyramids of 
Giseh. 
The adventures of Bancolo himself formed the subject of the 
drama. He was represented as an orphan, a beggar, a nobleman, a 
spendthrift, a sailor, a soldier, a priest, and a merchant; and the 
meeting with his father, the poor captive of Tunis, closed the play, 
the character of which was so diversified as sometimes to excite the 
boisterous mirth of children, at others to draw tears from the eyes of 
men. Sometimes, too, the effect suddenly changed from the most 
noisy merriment to the deepest distress. The great magician was 
Bancolo. He seemed to possess the heart of his audience, so as to 
be able to draw forth at pleasure laughter or tears. As the curtain 
fell, the assembly rose in a mass, and with a voice resembling thun- 
der exclaimed, “ Bancolo! Bancolo! the illustrious Polichinelle ! 
let him come forward.” Bancolo was arrayed in the uniform of a 
warrior in his triumphal costume, and as Polichinelle. 
The plaudits instantly burst forth with renewed fury ; and cries of 
“Long live Bancolo!” resounded from all parts of the house. Such 
demonstrations of rapture might almost have led to the supposition 
that Venice had recovered her ancient dominion over the ocean, and 
that the nuptials of her doge with the Adriatic Sea were about to be 
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