How Harlequin Came to be Born
At Bergamo, between the Alps and the Lombard Plain, there was once a fruit-seller. He was a prosperous man, for all the nobility and gentry of the town bought their fruit from him; and he was a portly, comfortable man, rosy as one of his own ripe apples. This, some folk said, was because he had never married.
But one day he noticed a girl, a mere slip of a girl, but very pretty, with black hair and laughing black eyes, who stood looking at the fruit in his shop.
“What would you like, miss?” he asked.
“Nothing, thank you, sir,” said the girl. “I only want to look. They are so lovely.”
“Oh! very well,” said the fruit-seller. “There is no charge for looking.”
Presently the girl went away, with what sounded like a little sigh of regret.
Next day she came again, and the fruit-seller, who had a kind heart and thought that perhaps the girl was too poor to buy anything, gave her an orange and an apple. But instead of eating them, she carried them away with her, holding one in each hand and gazing at them lovingly.
That night the fruit-seller could not sleep for thinking of the girl. Nor could he the next.
“This is nonsense,” he said; but still he lay awake.
“I wonder what is the matter with me?” he said.
For answer there appeared against the darkness a vision of the girl’s pretty little face, with its great black eyes and lips like the most delicious sort of cherries.
The fruit-seller did not believe in wasting time.
“You seem to be very fond of fruit,” he said, when the girl arrived as usual on the following morning.
“I am,” she answered. “I love them better than anything in the world.”
“But only to look at? Don’t you ever eat them?”
“No,” she said. “They are too beautiful.”
“Then what do you live on?”
“Honey, mostly,” said the girl.
“I am not surprised to hear it,” said the fruit-seller gallantly.
“I like ortolans, too,” said the girl.
“Oh!” said the fruit-seller. Ortolans were very expensive.
But the girl was very pretty indeed; and if ortolans cost money, the fruit-seller had money and to spare.
“How would you like all these fruit for your very own?” he asked.
Now it was the girl’s turn to say “Oh!” Her eyes grew bigger than ever.
“I mean,” the fruit-seller went on, “how would you like to come and look after this shop? In short, and not to beat about the bush, how would you like to marry me?”
“I should like it very much indeed,” said the girl, who was a simple soul and always said just what she meant.
So married they were; and neither of them regretted it. The fruit-seller, whom his neighbours had regarded as a confirmed old bachelor, proved to be the most devoted of husbands, and gave his wife as many ortolans as she could possibly eat; while she was the merriest and most charming of wives imaginable. She was always laughing and dancing—especially dancing. One of the first things which the fruit-seller had noticed about her was how lightly she walked, and now that she was happy she hardly walked at all—she flitted.
All the same, she was very useful in the shop. The fruit-seller had been used to set out his fruit anyhow, often leaving them in the ugly, battered baskets in which he had bought them. But his wife changed all that. She had notions of her own about window-dressing, and her husband, though he could not see that the way the fruit were arranged made any difference to their taste, let her do what she would. So she devised wonderful contrasts of golden orange and purple grape, and piled the apples into glowing pyramids. The shop became one of the sights of Bergamo, and people came from far and near to see it. The fruit-seller’s business doubled, and he had to admit that his wife was not only a very delightful companion, but a very good business woman to boot.
In due course a son was born to this happy couple. He had his mother’s eyes; laughed instead of crying when he was born; and hardly ever stopped laughing afterwards. He danced before he could walk, though it would not be very easy to describe how he did it. He was called Harlequin.
The fruit-seller was immensely proud of this son of his, and his mother worshipped him.
“When he is old enough,” she said, “I shall make him a suit of all the colours of the fruit in the shop. For if it had not been for the fruit there would have been no Harlequin.”
So when the time came for Harlequin to be breeched, she made him a wonderful suit of diamond-shaped pieces of cloth, red and purple, green and orange; and Harlequin was the smartest little boy in Bergamo.