When Uncle Pio discovers his protégé, his life seems complete, but the protégé's tragedy is only beginning.

Thornton Wilder, today on the Classic Tales Podcast.

Welcome to the Classic Tales Podcast. Thank you for listening.

We are proudly supported by our listeners. Please sign up to be a supporter for as little as $5 a month.

We'll give you a monthly coupon code for $8 off any audiobook order.

Your support on a monthly basis is vital to keep us going.

Go to classictalesaudiobooks.com and become a financial supporter today. Thank you so much.

One of the main themes in this book, the bridge of San Luis Ray, is the nature of love.

Wilder deftly dissects it, and we examine it in the many ways love manifests itself.

We've seen it in the parent-child relationship and the sibling relationship.

We've also seen it in the romantic relationship with Camilla Pericol and the brothers Manuel and Esteban.

Today, we'll examine the surrogate parent relationship. Afterwards, we'll conclude our journey.

And now, the bridge of San Luis Ray, part three of three by Thornton Wilder.

Part four, Uncle Pio.

In one of her letters, the 29th, the Marquess de Demont de Maillor tries to describe the impression that Uncle Pio, our aged Harlequin, made upon her.

I have been sitting all morning on the green balcony, making you a pair of slippers, myself. She tells her daughter.

As the golden wire did not take up my whole attention, I was able to follow the activity of a coterie of ants in the wall beside me.

Somewhere behind the partition, they were patiently destroying my house.

Every three minutes a little workman would appear between two boards and drop a grain of wood upon the floor below.

Then he would wave his antennae at me and back, busily, into his mysterious corridor.

In the meantime, various brothers and sisters of his, were trotting back and forth on a certain highway, stopping to massage one another's heads.

Or if the messages they bore were of first importance, refusing angrily to massage or to be massaged.

...