I looked again at his stomach.
"Oh, I see, sir; but you are deceived, you know, if you judge me by appearances. You cannot imagine what a pleasure it is when an Italian comes here. What you will? Weakness it may be.... I know not, ... but I should like to see him every day at table, and I believe that if my wife did not laugh at me I should send him a dozen dishes on my own account, as a foretaste."
"At what hour do you dine to-morrow?"
"At five. But, after all, ... one eats little here, ... hot country, ... everybody lives lightly, ... whatever their nationality may be.... That is the rule.... But you have not seen the other Italian who is here?"
So saying, he turned around, and a man came forward from a corner of the court where he had been watching us. The proprietor, after a few words, left us alone. The stranger was a man of about forty, miserably dressed, who spoke through closed teeth, and kept continually clenching his hands with a convulsive motion as if he was making an effort to keep from using his fists. He told me he was a chorus-singer from Lombardy, and that he had arrived the day before at Granada with other artists booked to sing at the opera for the summer season.
"A beastly country!" he exclaimed without any preamble, looking around as if he wished to make a speech.
"Then you do not remain in Spain voluntarily?" I asked.
"In Spain? I? Excuse me: it is just as if you had asked me whether I was staying voluntarily in a galley."
"But why?"
"Why? But can't you see what sort of people the Spaniards are—ignorant, superstitious, proud, bloodthirsty, impostors, thieves, charlatans, villains?"