The quarantine men sat on the wall, dangling their legs over the parapet
and singing the same old tune over and over again and the same old words
over and over again. “Fu tradito, fu tradito da una donna.” To them it
was a holiday.
Two gnomes came along and looked at me. I asked the first how old it
was; it said fourteen. They both looked about eight. I said that the
flies and the fowls ought to be put into quarantine, and the gnomes
grinned and showed their teeth till the corners of their mouths met at
the backs of their heads.
The skeleton of a bird was nailed up against a barn, and I said to a man:
“Aquila?”
He replied: “Aquila,” and I passed on.
The village boys came round me and sighed while they watched me
sketching. And the women came and exclaimed: “Oh! che testa, che testa!”
And the bells in the windows of the campanile began, and I turned and
looked up at their beautiful lolling and watched their fitful
tumble-aboutiness. They swung open-mouthed like elephants with uplifted
trunks, and I wished I could have fed them with buns. They were not like
English bells, and yet they rang more all ’Inglese than bells mostly do
in Italy—they had got it, but they had not got it right.
There used to be two crows, and when one disappeared the other came to
the house where it had not been for a month. While I was sketching it
played with a woman who was weeding; it got on her back and tried to bite
her hat; then it got down and pecked at the nails in her boots and tried
to steal them. It let her catch it, and then made a little fuss, but it
did not fly away when she let it go, it continued playing with her. Then
it came to exploit me but would not come close up. Signor Scartazzini
says it will play with all the women of the place but not with men or
boys, except with him.
Then there came a monk and passed by me, and I knew I had seen him before
but could not think where till, of a sudden, it flashed across me that he
was Valoroso XXIV, King of Paphlagonia, no doubt expiating his offences.
And I watched the ants that were busy near my feet, and listened to them
as they talked about me and discussed whether man has instinct.
“What is he doing here?” they said; “he wasn’t here yesterday. Certainly
they have no instinct. They may have a low kind of reason, but nothing
approaching to instinct. Some of the London houses show signs of
instinct—Gower Street, for example, does really seem to suggest instinct;
but it is all delusive. It is curious that these cities of theirs should
always exist in places where there are no ants. They certainly
anthropomorphise too freely. Or is it perhaps that we formicomorphise
more than we should?”
And Silvio came by on his way to church. It was he who taught all the
boys in Soglio to make a noise. Before he came up there was no sound to
be heard in the streets, except the fountains and the bells. I asked him
whether the curate was good to him.
“Si,” he replied, “è abbastanza buono.”