Rossini. If the genius enjoys fair physical health he may live in this fashion a long time after he has completed his masterpieces, or, as people say, has fulfilled his mission. It is a mere prejudice or fancy for men to imagine that genius must die young. I think that from thirty to forty years is believed to be the fatal limit of such lives. How often I have teased poor Bellini with this, and prophesied that he in his quality as genius must die as soon as he should attain the dangerous age. Strange, in spite of my jesting tone, he tormented himself over this prophecy; he called me his jettatore,[1] and always made the sign of the jettatura. He wished so much to live; he had such a passionate antipathy to death that he would not hear it mentioned. He was afraid of it as a child who fears to sleep in the dark. He was a good, dear child himself, sometimes rather naughty; but one only need threaten him with his early death, and he became at once whimpering and praying, and made the jettatura with his two uplifted fingers. . . . Poor Bellini!"
"Then you knew him personally? Was he handsome?"
- ↑ Jettatore. One who has the evil eye, and casts (jetta) its influence on others. The sign to avert it is made in Southern Italy by grasping the middle and ring finger with the thumb and throwing out the fore and little finger to resemble horns. In Tuscany it is more commonly la fica, or castagna, that is, closing the fist, so that the thumb protrudes between the third and middle finger.
