“Yes,” growled the proprietor.
“How much for a bed?”
“Two cents.”
I was skeptical and demanded to see the lodging that could be had at such a price.
“Giovanni!” bawled the head of the charming band, “bring in the bed!”
A moth-eaten youth threw open the back door and fired at my feet a dirty grain-sack, filled with crumpled straw that peeped out here and there.
When I had smoked a final pipe, the father bawled once more to his first-born and motioned to me to take up my bed and walk. I followed the youth across a stable yard towards a wing of the building, picking my way between the heaps of offal by the light of the feeble torch he carried. Giovanni waded inside, pointed out to me a long, narrow manger of slats, and fled, leaving me alone with the problem of how to repose nearly six feet of body on three feet of stuffed grain-sack. I tried every combination that ingenuity and some not entirely different experiences could suggest, but concluded at last to sleep on the bare slats and use the sack as a pillow.
I had just begun to doze, when an outer door opened and let in a great draught of night air, closely followed by a flock of sheep that quickly filled the stable to overflowing. Some of the animals attempted to overflow into the manger, sprang back when they found it already occupied, and made known their discovery to their companions by a long series of “baas.” The information awakened a truly Italian curiosity. The sheep organized a procession and the whole band filed by the manger, every animal poking its nose through the slats for a sniff. This formality over, each of the flock expressed a personal opinion of my presence in trembling, nerve-racking bleats, which discussion had by no means ended, when the youth came to inform me that it was morning and carried off my bed, fearful, no doubt, of my absconding with that valuable ameublement.
In spite of the bruises on the salient points of my anatomy, I plodded on at a good pace, hoping, with this early start, to reach Naples before the day was done. Two pairs of gendarmes, who halted me for long interviews, made the attempt useless, however; and I was still in the country when the gloom, settling down like fog, drove into the highway bands of fatigued humans and four-footed beasts, toiling homeward. The route descended, the intervening fields between squalid villages grew shorter and shorter, finally giving way entirely to an unbroken row of stone houses that shut in the highway. The bands of homing peasants increased to a stream of humanity against which I struggled to make my way.
Swept into the backwater of the human current, I cornered a workman and inquired for Naples.