horn it is necessary not at all. This is what they believe.”
He did not mean that you are bound to die if you see an empty hearse, but that unless you take precautions you will certainly meet with some kind of misfortune. I should say that the professor meets an empty hearse every day of his life. He came up to Castellinaria, not knowing there was to be a festa, found every place full and spent the night wandering about the streets. It was impossible not to be sorry for the poor man when I found him the following afternoon dozing on a chair in the kitchen and, in a fit of expansiveness, I offered him the other bed in my room. He accepted it with gratitude and said he should retire early as he was too much fatigued to care about religious festivities.
Peppino took the earliest opportunity of blowing me up for this, saying that it was most dangerous to sleep with a jettatore in the room. I told him I did not believe in all that nonsense any more than he did and we had a long discussion which he ended by producing a coral horn from his pocket, saying the professor might have the other bed if I would wear the coral all night.
Of course I chaffed him about having the horn in his pocket after his protestations of disbelief, but it was like talking to a kitten that has been caught stealing fish and I had to take his charm and promise to conform on the ground that one cannot be too careful.
The procession, which was the climax of the festa, did not begin till 11.30 p.m. and was not over till 3.30 the next morning. On returning to the albergo I found the professor still dozing on his chair, undisturbed by the constant chatter of all the servants and their friends. He had not gone to bed because the padrone, Peppino’s father, with the key of my room in his pocket, had gone out early in the evening and got lost in the crowd, so there were both my beds wasted and nothing to be done but to make the best of it. I settled myself on a chair in a corner and wished for day. Whereupon, almost immediately, Peppino, who, though I did not know it till afterwards, had been keeping near me and watching me all night in case I might meet the evil eye among the people, came in and the discussion rose into a tumult of dialect, as the situation was made clear to him, and then sank into complete silence
which was broken by his suddenly saying to me—
“You wish to sleep? All right. I show you the bed. Come on.”
He preceded me up some back stairs into a room occupied by a lady in one bed, her female attendant in another and, in various shakedowns on the floor, another woman, two men and more children than I could count by the light of one candle. We picked our way among them to the farther end of the room where there was a door. Peppino produced a key and opened it; to my surprise it led into my room.
“Buon riposo,” said Peppino, and was about to disappear the way we had come when I reminded him that the professor was to have the other bed. I had some difficulty with him, but when I had hung his coral round my neck he gave way.
After this I saw a great deal of the professor. He said he was forty-five and he was perhaps the most simple-minded, gentle creature I have ever known. Being with him was like listening to a child strumming on a worn-out piano. As we sat down to dinner next day he asked if he could have a little carbonate of soda. Peppino, with a