We now descended the hill, and, after crossing the dry bed of a
torrent and climbing up the ascent on the other side, found ourselves
in another suburb, San Dmitri. Here almost the entire population is
Greek. On every side may be seen black eyes and fine aquiline noses;
patriarchal-looking old men and slight, sinewy young ones; girls with
hair hanging down their backs, and bright intelligent-looking lads,
who disport themselves in the middle of the street among the chickens
and pigs, filling the air with their musical cries and harmonious
inflections. We approached a group of these boys who were engaged in
pelting one another with pebbles, all chattering at the same time.
One of them, about eight years old, the most impish-looking little
rascal of the lot, kept tossing his little fez in the air, every few
minutes calling out, “_Zito! zito!_” (Hurrah! hurrah!) Suddenly he
turned to another little chap seated on a doorstep near by, and cried,
“_Checchino! buttami la palla!_” (Checchino! throw me the ball).
Seizing him by the arm as though I were a gypsy kidnapper, I said,
“So you are an Italian?”--“Oh no, sir,” he answered; “I belong to
Constantinople.”--“Then who taught you to speak Italian?”--“Oh that?”
said he; “why, my mother”--“And where is your mother?” Just at that
moment, though, a woman carrying a baby in her arms approached, all
smiles, and explained to me that she was from Pisa, that she and her
husband, an engraver from Leghorn, had been in Constantinople for
eight years past, and that the boy was theirs. Had this good woman
had a handsome matronly face, a turretted crown upon her head, and a
long mantle floating majestically from her shoulders, she could not
have brought the image of Italy more forcibly before my eyes and mind.
“And how do you like living here?” I asked her. “What do you think of
Constantinople on the whole?”--“How can I tell?” said she, smiling
artlessly. “It seems to be like a city that--well, to tell you the
truth, I can never get it out of my head that it is the last day of
the Carnival;” and then, giving free rein to her Tuscan speech, she
explained to us that “_the Mussulman’s Christ is Mahomet_,” that a Turk
is allowed to marry four wives, that the Turkish language is admirable
for those who understand it, and various other pieces of equally
valuable information, but which, told in that language and amid those
strange surroundings, gave us more pleasure than the choicest bits of
news--so much so, indeed, that on parting we were fain to leave a small
monetary expression of our esteem in the hand of the little lad, and
exclaimed simultaneously as we walked off, “After all, there is nothing
that sets one up so as a mouthful of Italian now and then.”