At which he and all the peasants around, even including my guide, laughed aloud as at an excellent joke, and said, 'Cinquante, Ho! ho!' and dug each other in the ribs. But the innkeeper of Tizzano Val Parmense said in Italian a number of things which meant that I could but be joking, and added (in passing) that a lira made it a kind of gift to me. A lira was, as it were, but a token to prove that it had changed hands: a registration fee: a matter of record; at a lira it was pure charity. Then I said, 'Soixante Dix?' which meant nothing to him, so I held up seven fingers; he waved his hand about genially, and said that as I was evidently a good fellow, a traveller, and as anyhow he was practically giving me the wine, he would make it ninepence; it was hardly worth his while to stretch out his hand for so little money. So then I pulled out 80 c. in coppers, and said, 'Tutto', which means 'all'. Then he put the bottle before me, took the money, and an immense clamour rose from all those who had been watching the scene, and they applauded it as a ratified bargain. And this is the way in which bargains were struck of old time in these hills when your fathers and mine lived and shivered in a cave, hunted wolves, and bargained with clubs only.
So this being settled, and I eager for the wine, wished it to be opened, especially to stand drink to my guide. The innkeeper was in another room. The guide was too courteous to ask for a corkscrew, and I did not know the Italian for a corkscrew.
I pointed to the cork, but all I got out of my guide was a remark that the wine was very good. Then I made the emblem and sign of a corkscrew in my sketch-book with a pencil, but he pretended not to understand--such was his breeding. Then I imitated the mode, sound, and gesture of a corkscrew entering a cork, and an old man next to me said 'Tira-buchon'--a common French word as familiar as the woods of Marly! It was brought. The bottle was opened and we all drank together.
As I rose to go out of Tizzano Val Parmense my guide said to me, 'Se chiama Tira-Buchon perche E' lira il buchon? And I said to him, 'Dominus Vobiscum? and left him to his hills.
I took the road downwards from the ridge into the next dip and valley, but
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after a mile or so in the great heat (it was now one o'clock) I was exhausted. So I went up to a little wooded bank, and lay there in the shade sketching Tizzano Val Parmense, where it stood not much above me, and then I lay down and slept for an hour and smoked a pipe and thought of many things.
