"Fuyez?" it seemed to say. "Why 'fuyez'?"
Fulfil it!
[Soriano]
Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an iridescent bubble suspended in the sky.
This region is unfamiliar to me. Soriano lies on the slope of an immense old volcano and conveys at first glance a somewhat ragged and sombre impression. It was an unpleasantly warm day, but those macaroni--they atoned for everything. So exquisite were they that I forthwith vowed to return to Soriano, for their sake alone, ere the year should end. (I kept my vow.) The right kind at last, of lily-like candour and unmistakably authentic, having been purchased in large quantities at the outbreak of hostilities by the provident hostess, who must have anticipated a rise in price, a deterioration in quality, or both, as the result of war.
How came Mrs. Nichol to discover their whereabouts? That is her affair. I know not how she has managed, in so brief a space of time, to collect such a variety of useful local information. I can only testify that on her arrival in Rome she knew no more about the language and place than the proverbial babe unborn, and that nowadays, when anybody is faced with a conundrum like mine, one always hears the words: "Try Mrs. Nichol." And how many women, by the way, would have made a note of the particular quality of those macaroni? One in a hundred? These are temperamental matters....
We also--for of course I took a friend with me, a well-preserved old gentleman of thirty-two, whose downward career from a brilliant youth into hopeless mediocrity has been watched, by both of us, with philosophic unconcern--we also consumed a tender chicken, a salad containing olive oil and not the usual motor-car lubricant, an omelette made with genuine butter, and various other items which we enjoyed prodigiously, eating, one would think, not only for the seven lean years just past but for seven--yea, seventy times seven--lean years to come. So great a success was this open-air meal that my companion, a case-hardened Roman, was obliged to confess:
"It seems one fares better in the province than at home. You could not get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound."
As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly sparkling--very young, but not altogether innocent.
There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity nowadays.