“Good morning, Buffo mio, and I hope you have had a good night and slept well after your long journey and your evening at the theatre.”
He sat down, put his arm on the table and mournfully rested his head on his hand.
“My dear Enrico,” he said, “I have passed a night of horror. I did not get to sleep at all, and then I was continually waking up again—”
“Nonsense, Buffo,” I exclaimed.
“But it’s not nonsense. Ah! you do not know what it is to lie awake all night, sleepless and trembling, between sheets that are made of lava, and to hear footsteps and the clanking of armour and to see Rinaldo shining in the dark and threatening you as he holds over you his sword, Fusberta, and shouts in your ear: ‘How dare you applaud when my brother-in-law is killed?’“
He seemed to enjoy his coffee, however, and to be ready for plenty of exertion. He wanted a piece of lava to take home with him, and would it not be possible to pick up a piece if we went to the slopes of Etna? So we made inquiries and were told where to find the station of the Circum-Etnea Railway and started soon after breakfast for Paternò. The soil was black with lava and the wind was tremendous and carried the gritty dust into our mouths and down our necks. In that way he got plenty of lava to take home, but he wanted a large piece, and we could not stop the train and get out and break a piece of rock off, besides, we had nothing to break it with. We were like that old sailor in the poem who was surrounded by water, water everywhere, but not a drop of a kind to satisfy his immediate requirements. It was just as bad at Paternò; from the station to the town all our energies were required to get along in the blinding wind and the stinging dust and then we had to have our luncheon.
“And what would you like for colazione, Buffo?”
“Seppia and interiori di pollo, if you please.”
But he had to be a Sicilian and eat maccaroni with me,
because the inn could not provide what he wanted. Altogether the day was perhaps something of a failure, and we returned without the piece of lava.