This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
DIVERSIONS IN
SICILY
BY
HENRY FESTING JONES
[Picture: Title illustration]
LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD 1920
_First Published_ . . . 1909
_Re-issued_ . . . 1920
TO
ENRICO PAMPALONE
MY DEAR ENRICO,
Your father and I, sitting one summer night on the terrace at
Castellinaria watching the moon on the water, agreed that this book might
be dedicated to you, although you have not yet put it into my power to
ask your permission.
"After all," exclaimed your father, "what is existence?" And I was
unable to give him a satisfactory reply.
When Orlando and his Paladins were overcome at Roncisvalle through the
treachery of Gano di Magonza, were they all slain? When "the Crusaders'
streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise," did none
linger? When the angel carried up to heaven the soul of Guido Santo, did
he never fight another battle? The young men of your island hardly think
so; their thoughts and actions are still coloured by the magnificent
language and the chivalrous exploits of Christian and Turk. As long as
there is an imaginative shoeblack in the Quattro Canti working for
pennies by day, so long will those pennies be paid for the story to be
told by night in the marionette theatre. Often will Angelica recover her
ring, and as often be robbed of it again; often will the ghostly voice of
Astolfo, imprisoned in a myrtle upon Alcina's magic isle, reveal the
secret of his woe; often will Rinaldo drink of the Fountains of Hatred
and of Love, and, forgetful of the properties of those waters, return and
drink once more.
And what of those other and less heroic figures--the brigadier and his
guards gambling among the ruins of Selinunte, the ingenious French
gentleman classifying the procession at Calatafimi, Micio buying his
story-books and chocolate at Castellinaria, and many another whom I
should like to think you will some day meet, palely wandering up and down
these pages?
To pursue the subject might disincline you ever to take leave of the
world of the unborn, whereas I am desirous of making your acquaintance as
soon as possible. Let me, then, rather assure you that life is not all
marionettes and metaphysics, and that I know of no reason why you should
not at once enter upon an existence as real as that enjoyed by your dear
father or your beautiful mother--it would be unbecoming in a son to
expect more. Castellinaria is waiting to welcome you. You could not
have a more delightful birthplace than your native town, or more charming
compatriots than your fellow-townspeople. Only resemble your parents,
and you will never regret having hastened the day when I shall be
entitled to sign myself
Your affectionate Godfather,
HENRY FESTING JONES.
NOTE
Chapters VIII-XI have been enlarged and re-written since August, 1903,
when they appeared as _A Festa on Mount Eryx_ in _The Monthly Review_. I
have to thank Mr. John Murray for kindly giving me permission to reprint
them here.
A few sentences in Chapter XIII have been taken from a pamphlet I wrote
and had printed for private circulation in 1904, entitled: _Diary of a
Journey through North Italy to Sicily in the spring of 1903_, _undertaken
for the purpose of leaving the MSS. of three books by Samuel Butler at
Varallo-Sesia_, _Aci-Reale and Trapani_.
It would be impossible to enumerate and thank all the many friends who,
with the courtesy and patience that never desert a Sicilian, have given
me information, explanation and assistance. Among them are two, however,
to whom, and to whose families, I desire to give my special thanks,
namely: Cavaliere Uffiziale Giovanni Grasso, of the Teatro Macchiavelli,
Catania; and Signor Achille Greco, of the Marionette Theatre, in the
Piazza Nuova, Palermo.
Signor Greco wrote to me recently that, for Rosina's riddle in his
episode of the masks in _Samson_, he had dipped in the stream of
children's games current to-day in Palermo; he did not appear to know
that Plato had dipped in his own Athenian stream for the riddle quoted by
Glaucon towards the end of the fifth book of the _Republic_. The riddles
are similar not because Rosina had read the dialogue, nor because Glaucon
had seen the play, but because the two streams flowed as one until Greek
colonists took their folk-lore with them into Sicily before Plato was
born.
CONTENTS
SELINUNTE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE BRIGADIER AND THE 3
LOTTERY
CASTELLINARIA
II. PEPPINO 29
III. THE PROFESSOR 41
IV. THE WINE-SHIP 52
CATANIA
V. MICHELLE AND THE 77
PRINCESS OF BIZERTA
TRAPANI
VI. FERRAU AND ANGELICA 97
VII. THE DEATH OF 113
BRADAMANTE
MOUNT ERYX
VIII. MONTE SAN GIULIANO 131
IX. THE MADONNA AND THE 149
PERSONAGGI
X. THE UNIVERSAL DELUGE 166
XI. THE RETURN 181
CUSTONACI
XII. FAITH AND 189
SUPERSTITION
CALATAFIMI
XIII. THE PRODIGAL SON AND 213
THE ARTS
PALERMO
XIV. SAMSON 235
XV. THE CONVERSION OF THE 254
EMPEROR CONSTANTINE
CASTELLINARIA
XVI. A GREAT ACTOR 279
XVII. SUPPER WITH THE 290
PLAYERS
XVIII. A YOUNG CRITIC 304
XIX. BRANCACCIA 317
SELINUNTE
CHAPTER I--THE BRIGADIER AND THE LOTTERY
One wet Saturday evening in May I found myself at Castelvetrano
consulting Angelo, the guide, about the weather. His opinion was that it
would clear up during the night; I said that if it did we would go to
Selinunte, and this confirmed his view; so, on the understanding that
there was to be no rain, I appointed him padrone of the expedition and
promised to acquiesce in all his arrangements.
He was quite right; Sunday morning was brilliantly fine, and at about
8.30 we started. He began by showing me his purchases; he had been out
early, marketing, and his basket contained fresh tunny, the first of the
season, veal, salame, dried fish, bread and oranges, but no wine; he said
we should find that at the locanda, where they would cook the tunny and
the veal for us.
Cicciu, our driver, was one of those queer creatures one sometimes meets
in Italy. At first I took him to be of feeble intellect, for when I
spoke to him or merely looked at him, he shut up his eyes, showed his
teeth and covered his face all over with grinning wrinkles; but on
knowing him better, I found he was really extremely intelligent and
perfectly good. He was about sixteen, but would have passed for twenty.
His general appearance was grey, the actual colour of his face, hands and
clothes being powdered out of sight by the dust which held all together
like a transparent glaze over a painting. He drove us along between
flowery fields of cistus until the temples of Selinunte came in sight,
then down to the Marinella, a handful of houses on the shore under the
low cliff. We drew up at the locanda which distinguished itself by
displaying over the door, in a five-ounce medicine bottle, a sample of a
cloudy, canary-coloured fluid to advertise the wine Angelo had spoken of,
and the forlorn bunch of five or six faded sprigs of camomile which hung
on the same hook constituted the bush. We left our basket with
instructions and drove off to inspect the acropolis and the ruins,
returning in about an hour and a half.
The locanda was an immense, cavernous room divided into front and back by
a partition about seven feet high with an opening in the middle. There
was no regular window, but we were only a few feet from the sea which
reflected the sunshine through the open door and up into the arched roof
and illuminated the front part. In the obscurity behind the partition
were dim ladders leading up to trap-doors and, through a few holes in the
roof and in the end wall, blinding rays of light glinted on piles of
earthenware--saucepans, jugs, cups and saucers, coloured crockery lamps,
rough basins glazed green inside, heaped up in stacks and protected from
one another by straw. There were hanks of rope, fans of hawks' feathers
for blowing the fire, palm-leaf brooms and oil-jars big enough for
thieves. There were horns on the walls to keep off the evil eye, prints
of the Madonna, some with sprigs of camomile stuck into the frame, a
cheapissimo coloured lithograph of S. Giuseppe with the Bambino, and in
front of it on a little bracket, in half a tumbler of oil, floated a
burning wick. In a corner was the landlord putting his whole soul into
the turning about of a sieve full of coffee beans which he had roasted
and was now cooling. And everything was covered with a grey dust like
the bloom on a plum or like Cicciu.
Our table was spread in a clearing among the pottery in the front part of
the room and everything was ready on a clean white cloth, wine and all.
Besides the landlord and his wife there were two men in uniform, one a
corporal of the coastguards and the other a policeman. There was also a
third man in ordinary clothes--I did not find out what he was, but they
were all, including the landlord, friends of Angelo who, in his capacity
of padrone, invited them to join us at lunch. We were just about to
begin when I missed Cicciu. Angelo said we need not wait for him, he had
only gone to the sea to wash his feet. So we sat down without him and
presently he returned saying he had washed all over, but he looked just
as dusty as before his bath.
There must be something in the air of Selinunte that encourages bathing,
for they told me that in a few days an annual festa was to take place
there, the pilgrims arriving the evening before and spending the whole
night bathing in the sea, the men in one part and the women in another;
at dawn they would come out of the water, dress and attend to their
religious duties. I said I should like very much to see it, whereupon
the corporal, who sat next me and clinked glasses with me every time he
drank, invited me to stay--there would be plenty of room in the caserma
and they could make me comfortable for as long as I would remain. I had,
however, made appointments elsewhere, so I told him it was unfortunate,
but I could not alter my plans and was sorry I must decline his
invitation.
After lunch by general consent we all went strolling up the cliff and
through a garden belonging to a large house. I assumed that Angelo had
been arranging something in dialect and asked the corporal, who happened
to be next me, where we were going. He first picked a geranium most
politely and stuck it in my button-hole; then he told me we were going to
the big house which was the caserma. It appeared that he had been so
overcome by my hospitality that he had invited Angelo to bring me to call
upon the brigadier and his companions-in-arms at the guard-house. It was
really Angelo who had shown the hospitality, nevertheless, though not
directly responsible for all details, I was responsible for having
shifted the responsibility on Angelo by making him padrone of the
expedition, so that the hospitality was in a sense mine. But if left to
myself, I should never have had the courage to invite two such
influential members of the legal profession as a coastguard and a
policeman to lunch with me, not to speak of the third man who might have
been anything from a sheriff's officer to the Lord Chancellor himself.
But they were all friends of Angelo and so was I and in Sicily the maxim
"Gli amici dei nostri amici sono i nostri" is acted upon quite literally.
Passing through the door of the caserma we entered a large oblong room;
at each end were three or four beds and on the side opposite the door two
open windows. Through the windows across a barley-field, lightly stirred
by the breeze from the sea, the Temple of Apollo was lying in the heat,
an extinct heap of ruins, as though the naughty boy of some family of
Cyclopes had spilt his brother's box of bricks. In the middle of the
room ten or twelve men were sitting round a table on which were dishes of
what at first I took to be some kind of frutta di mare, objects about the
size and shape of sea-urchins. The brigadier received me with great
courtesy and put me to sit next him, and the corporal sat on the other
side of me. A dreamy Sunday afternoon feeling pervaded the air, the
brigadier said they were slaughtering time ("bisogna ammazzare un po' di
tempo"). Being to a certain extent soldiers, their business was to kill
something and they were compassing the destruction of their present enemy
by drinking wine and eating not sea-urchins but cold boiled artichokes.
He gave me some and begged me to make myself at home. The corporal
clinked glasses with me and said that the wine was better than that at
the locanda, wherein I agreed with him, but I did not tell him I found
the artichokes a little uninteresting. They were so very small and there
was so much to do to get what little there was of them that they were
more trouble than shrimps or walnuts. Looked at from the brigadier's
point of view, as a means of passing the time on Sunday, they reminded me
of the Litany; pulling off each leaf was like listening to each short
clause and eating the unimportant little bit at the end was like intoning
the little response; then the larger piece that was left, when all the
leaves were off, followed like the coda and finale of the Litany after
the more monotonous part has been disposed of. The Litany has, however,
the advantage that it comes only one at a time, we do not kneel down to a
whole plateful of it; on the other hand, there was wine with the
artichokes and they were free from any trace of morbid introspection.
The brigadier and Angelo were in earnest conversation about something,
and, as my mind began to wander from the artichokes (here again they
resembled the Litany) and was able to attend more to what was going on, I
became aware that they were talking about the lottery. Selinunte depends
for news upon chance visitors and Angelo had brought the winning numbers
which he had got from a cousin of his in one of the lottery offices at
Castelvetrano. The brigadier had lost and in giving his instructions for
the next week's drawing seemed to experience great difficulty in making
up his mind.
Presently there looked in at one of the windows a hunchback riding on a
mule and carrying a guitar. Several of the guards went to help him in,
greeting him with shouts of--
"Addio, Filippo!"
He lifted one of his legs over the saddle, and then I saw that not only
was he a hunchback but that his legs were withered. He reached up and
hung on to the ledge over the window with both hands and swung himself
very cleverly and with no assistance into a sitting position on the
window-sill; two of the guards then picked him up, carried him into the
room, set him on a chair and gave him some wine and artichokes. Being a
jolly fellow, as cripples often are, he soon tired of the artichokes,
asked for his guitar and began to sing Neapolitan songs. He had not sung
more than two before the brigadier told me I should like to wash my hands
and had better come into his bedroom. I glanced at Angelo who nodded
back and the brigadier took me off with him. He began by showing me his
room which was very clean and tidy. His bed was at one end, his table,
with his official papers and books, in the middle and against the wall
hung his guns which he showed me particularly, declaring that he was
passionately devoted to the chase. After he had done the honours I
washed my hands and so did he; then he led the conversation to what his
manner betrayed was the real business of the interview. He asked me my
name and age, whether I was married or single and particulars of my
family, whether I was an Englishman from London or from New York and how
much a metre I had paid for the stuff my clothes were made of. This last
was the only question that gave me any real trouble, but I made a hasty
calculation, converted the result into francs, deducted five per cent.
for cash and hazarded--
"Fourteen lire."
In return for his polite interest in my affairs I pretended a similar
interest in his, and it turned out that we had a friend in common--a
maresciallo dei carabinieri whom I had met on Monte San Giuliano and of
whom I was able to give the latest information namely, that he had
retired, gone home to Cremona and married. Carabinieri are not allowed
to marry so long as they are in service, or rather they may marry but
only on condition of depositing a sum of money which is fixed at an
amount beyond anything they are likely to be able to lay their hands on.
Having exhausted our questions and answers we returned to the guard-room
and the corporal welcomed us by filling our glasses again. The
brigadier, before sitting down, took Angelo aside and became again
immersed in conversation; this time he appeared to be getting on more
satisfactorily with his instructions. The artichokes were beginning to
lose their attractions for every one, so I took out a packet of
cigarettes and offered them round. In those days there used to be in
every packet of Italian cigarettes a loose piece of paper about the size
of a postage stamp with a number on it. Boxes of biscuits in England
sometimes have a similar paper to identify the person responsible for the
packing should anything be found to be wrong. In my packet there
happened to be two pieces of paper which fluttered out upon the table as
I opened it. The brigadier instantly pounced upon them. There was
silence in the room. Every one watched and waited. Each of my pieces of
paper bore the number thirty-three. The brigadier did me the honour of
cancelling all his previous orders to Angelo and of putting his money for
next week's lottery on thirty-three. The corporal and several of the men
who had not intended to gamble changed their minds and gave similar
instructions.
It was now time to think of returning, so Angelo got out of the window
into the sunlight and went off to fetch the carriage and the guards began
to chaff poor Cicciu about his watch-chain which was a massive and
extensive affair in silver. The corporal said they were playing a game
with him and offered to teach it to me. I am not good at games, but this
one was so simple that I mastered it in less than a minute and played it
thus--
First I asked Cicciu to tell me the time. He shut up his eyes, showed
his teeth and covered his face all over with grinning wrinkles. Then I
asked him the time again. He replied in the same way. I asked him again
and so on till he had overcome his shyness and at last pulled out his
watch which was found to consist of a circular piece of tin with a paper
watch-face gummed on to one side of it. Then we all laughed at the
contrast between this and what his elaborate watch-chain had led us to
expect.
While we were still laughing, Angelo drove up to the window and said it
was time to go, so we began saying "Good-bye." Some of the men departed
before us, but the brigadier, the corporal and one or two others were
going our way. The brigadier fetched his gun in order to enjoy the chase
and we all got out of the window. Angelo accompanied the hunting party,
but the corporal came in the carriage with me and Cicciu drove us round
the barley-field to the Temple of Apollo to wait for the others. On the
way we heard the brigadier firing off his gun and wondered what sport he
was having, and I took a leaf out of his book of politeness and asked the
corporal his age and particulars of his family, after which, of course, I
had to tell him all about myself and to promise I would take the first
opportunity of visiting him in his home to clink glasses and drink wine
with him.
We went all over the ruins while waiting for the hunting party which
presently joined us. The brigadier was satisfied with his sport and
permitted himself the pleasure of offering me the spoils--two birds the
size of sparrows--which Angelo was to cook for supper. Then we said
"Good-bye," promising to exchange picture postcards when I should be back
in England. The corporal, however, was still going our way and we took
him in the carriage a little further. We asked if he could not come with
us all the way to Castelvetrano and he seemed inclined to do so, but he
had to patrol the coast in the direction of Marsala from eleven o'clock
that night till eleven the next morning, and it was so annoying because,
as he must go to Castelvetrano in a few days, he might almost just as
well come with us now. We hoped he would see his way to doing so and he
hesitated and appeared to be on the point of yielding, but finally made
the Herculean choice of duty before pleasure on the very sensible ground
that, if it should be discovered he had deserted his post, he would be
put into prison for two months. With the brigadier and all the guards in
the secret, it seemed impossible that he should escape detection, so we
pressed the invitation no further and took leave of him after exchanging
names and addresses and promising to send postcards to one another.
As we drove away I could not but draw a comparison in my mind between the
corporal's refusal of my invitation and mine of his, and I was ashamed of
myself for the way I had scamped the bathing festa. I had made another
engagement and there was an end of it. The corporal, on the other hand,
had spared no expense in the manner of his refusal, nothing short of two
months' imprisonment could have prevented him from coming with us. We
English ought to be able to do this and some of us, I suppose, can, but
there is no Italian who cannot. The French are polite, but not always to
be trusted. A Frenchman, speaking of an Englishman to whom I had
introduced him, said to me--
"He speaks French worse than you do."
Any Italian, wishing to express a similar idea, would have said--
"He speaks Italian, it is true, but not so well as you do."
My meditations were interrupted by Angelo who had been taking stock of
our possessions and, on looking into the basket, exclaimed with disgust
that we had been robbed of our fish. It was the first I had heard about
our fish, but he said the brigadier had given us ten and he had put them
into the basket. How could they have got out again? All the afternoon
we had been surrounded by coastguards and policemen whose profession is,
as every one knows, to prevent robbery and to take up thieves. Angelo
was furious and wanted to drive back and complain to the brigadier, but,
on looking further through the basket, we found there were still two fish
and I said they would be quite enough for supper--with the sparrows--and
he finally agreed that we had better do nothing, it might look as though
we thought the brigadier was not up to his business.
"And when the tailor is wearing a coat that does not fit him," said
Angelo, "it is rude to tell him of it."
So we drove on among the cistus bushes and I asked him about the lottery.
Every Saturday morning ninety cards numbered from one to ninety are put
into a wheel of fortune and a blind-folded child from the orphan asylum
publicly draws out five. Italy is divided into several districts and a
drawing takes place in the chief town of each, the winning numbers are
telegraphed to the lottery offices all over the country and afterwards
posted up and published in the newspapers. Any one wishing to try his
luck chooses one or more numbers and buys a ticket and this choosing of
the numbers is a very absorbing business. In the neighbourhood of
Castelvetrano at that time the favourite numbers were five and twenty-six
and the people were betting on those numbers when they had no special
reason for choosing any others. Angelo could not tell why these two
numbers were preferred, he could only say that the people found them
sympathetic and, as a matter of fact, twenty-six had come out the day
before. There are many ways of choosing a number if you find five and
twenty-six unsympathetic; you can wait till something remarkable happens
to you, look it out in "the useful book that knows" and then bet on its
number, for everything really remarkable has a number in the book and, if
you do not possess a copy, it can be consulted in a shop as the _Post
Office Directory_ can be consulted in London. Or, if nothing remarkable
happens to you in real life, perhaps you may have dreamt of a lady in a
white dress, or of a man whetting a scythe, or of meeting a snake in the
road--anything will do, so long as it strikes you at the time. When you
see the country people coming into town on market day you may be sure
that each one has received instructions from relations and friends at
home to put something on a number for them.
Some make a practice of gambling every week, others only try their luck
when they have a few spare soldi, others only when they have witnessed
something irresistibly striking. A favourite way of choosing a number is
to get into conversation with certain old monks who have a reputation for
spotting winners, if I may so speak. You do not ask the monk for a
number outright, you engage him in conversation on general topics and as
he understands what is expected of him, though he pretends he does not,
he will presently make some such irrelevant remark as, "Do you like
flowers?" whereupon you rapidly bring the interview to a conclusion and,
if you do not know the number for "flower," you look it out in the book
and bet on it. It occurred to me that possibly that was what the
brigadier had been doing with me when he took me into his room to wash.
"Of course it was," said Angelo; "he did not really want you to wash your
hands, he wanted to get a number out of you."
"Did he get one?" said I.
"He told me to put his money on 14."
"That must have been because I said I paid 14 francs a metre for this
cloth. But he changed that afterwards."
"Yes," replied Angelo. "He thought the number that came out of your
packet of cigarettes would be better."
Angelo was not strictly right about the brigadier not wanting me to wash,
he said so merely to agree with me, for in Sicily, among those who have
not become sophisticated by familiarity with money and its little ways
nor cosmopolitanized by travel, and whose civilization remains unmodified
by northern and western customs, it is usual for the host to give his
guest an opportunity to wash after eating. Sometimes the lady of the
house has herself taken me into her bedroom, poured out the water and
held the basin while I have washed; she has then handed me the towel and
presently escorted me back to the sitting-room.
We soon overtook a man who had caught a rabbit and wanted to sell it for
a lira and a half. Angelo bargained with him for ever so long and, being
at last satisfied that the rabbit was freshly killed, bought it for a
lira and put it into the basket, saying he would cook it for supper, and
that no doubt the Madonna had sent it to make up for the loss of the
fish.
I asked him what I must do to get a ticket in the lottery for the
following Saturday. He replied that his cousin would be happy to sell me
one and, if I would settle how much to risk and what number to put it on,
he would take me to the office in the morning. I said I would risk a
lira, which he thought overdoing it, as he and his friends seldom risked
more than four or five soldi, but there was still the troublesome matter
of the number. He asked whether anything unusual had happened to me
lately, either in real life or in a dream. I told him that I seldom
remembered a dream, but that I had had an unusually delightful day in
real life at Selinunte. In his capacity of padrone he acknowledged the
compliment, but feared there would be no number for that in the book.
Then I asked if there was likely to be a number for having breakfast with
a coastguard as it was the first time I had done so. He mused and said
no doubt there would be a number for breakfast and another for
coastguard, but not for the combination. Could not we add the two
numbers together and bet on whatever they amounted to, if it were not
over 90? Angelo would not hear of anything of the kind; we must think of
something less complicated. It would never have occurred to him to read
for Metaphysics under M and for China under C, and combine the
information into the article that appeared in the _Eatanswill Gazette_ as
a review of a work on Chinese Metaphysics. He asked if I had not lately
had "una disgrazia qualunque." I reminded him of the theft of our fish,
but that did not satisfy him, he considered it too trivial, though he had
made enough fuss about it at the time, and 17, which in Sicily is one of
the numbers for an ordinary misfortune, was too general. It seemed a
pity I had not been involved in the fall of a balcony because that was a
very good thing to bet on and he knew it had a number, although he did
not remember it at the moment. Filippo, the hunchback, was no use
because, though it is fortunate to meet hunchbacks, and of course they
have a number, there was nothing remarkable in seeing Filippo at the
caserma--he is always there.
By this time we had reached Castelvetrano, and supper overshadowed the
lottery. Angelo cooked everything; we began with maccaroni, after which
we ate the fish and the sparrows, and wound up with the rabbit. It was
all very good, but it seemed hardly right to eat the sparrows, besides,
there was scarcely as much on one of them as there had been on one of the
artichokes at the caserma.
During supper, something--it may have been the sparrows or, perhaps, the
Madonna again--inspired me with an idea for a number that met with
Angelo's enthusiastic approval. I remembered that my birthday was near
and proposed to put my money upon the number of that day of the month.
Nothing could have been better and he recommended me to take also my age,
that would give me two numbers and I could have an ambo, I should not win
on a single number unless it came out first, whereas, if I did not
specify their positions, my two numbers might come out anywhere and if
they did I should win about 250 francs. Angelo accepted as a good omen
the fact that neither of my numbers exceeded 90, and next morning we
called on his cousin and put a franc on 27 and 52.
Now, a lottery is an immoral thing, accordingly I expected to feel as
though I had committed an immoral action, instead of which I felt just as
I usually do. I, therefore, gave my ticket to Angelo in order that, if I
should develop a conscience by the time the numbers came out, I might
silence it by the consciousness of having disclaimed all hope of gain.
This was perhaps a little cowardly, for the effects of a lottery are said
to be most pernicious to those who win. But no harm was done in the end,
the actual numbers drawn the following Saturday being 39, 42, 89, 83, 28,
so Angelo lost and likewise the brigadier and the corporal and the guards
who had put their money on 33.
CASTELLINARIA