The Improvisatore Or Life in Italy Author:Hans Christian Andersen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. UNCLE FEPFO. THE NIGHT IN THE COLOSSEUM. THE DISMISSAL. What should really now be done with me ? that was the question which was asked when we ... more »came hack to Rome, and into my mother's house. Fra Martino advised that I should go to the Campagna to Mariuccia's parents, who kept flocks, and were honest people, to whom the twenty scudi would be wealth, and who would not hesitate to take me home to them, and to treat me as their own child; but, then, I was in part a member of the church, and, if I went out to the Campagna, I should no longer swing the censer in the church of the Capuchins. Fe- derigo also thought it better that I should remain in Rome with some decent people; he should not like, he said, that I should be only a rough, simple peasant. Whilst Fra Martino counselled with himself in the convent, my uncle Peppo came stumping upon his wooden clogs. He had heard of my mother's death, and that twenty scudi had fallen to me, and for this reason he also now came to give his opinion. He declared, that as he was the only relative I had in the world, he should take me to himself; that I was to follow him, and that every thing which the house contained was his, as well as the twenty scudi. Mariuccia maintained with great zeal that she and Fra Martino had already arranged every thing for the best, and gave him to understand that he, a cripple and a beggar, had enough to do with himself, and could not have any voice in the matter. Federigo left the room, and the two who remained reproached each other mutually with the selfish ground of their regard for me. Uncle Peppo spit forth all his venom, and Mariuccia stood like a Fury before him. She would, she said, have nothing to do with him, nor with the boy ; she would have nothing to do with any thing. She said he m...« less