The images revive, curiously pertinacious, with dim lapses and gulfs. I can see them still, the two boys, their grave demeanour belied by mobile lips and mischievous fair curls of Northern ancestry; the other, leaning forward intent upon the music, and caressing his moustache with bent fingers upon which glittered a jewel set in massive gold—some scarab or intaglio, the spoil of old Magna Graecia. His conversation, during the intervals, moved among the accepted formulas of cosmopolitanism with easy flow, quickened at times by the individual emphasis of a man who can forsake conventional tracks and think for himself. Among other things, he had contrived an original project for reviving the lemon industry of his country, which, though it involved a few tariff modifications—“a mere detail”—struck me as amazingly effective and ingenious. The local deputy, it seems, shared my view, for he had undertaken to bring it before the notice of Parliament.
What was it?
I have forgotten!
So we discussed the world, while the music played under the starlit southern night.
It must have been midnight ere a final frenzied galop on the part of the indefatigable band announced the close of the entertainment. I walked a few paces beside the lame “proprietor” who, supported on the arms of his nephews, made his way to the spot where the cabs were waiting—his rheumatism, he explained, obliging him to drive. How he had enjoyed walking as a youth, and what pleasure it would now have given him to protract, during a promenade to my hotel, our delightful conversation! But infirmities teach us to curtail our pleasures, and many things that seem natural to man’s bodily configuration are found to be unattainable. He seldom left his rooms; the stairs—the diabolical stairs! Would I at least accept his card and rest assured how gladly he would receive me and do all in his power to make my stay agreeable?
That card has gone the way of numberless others which the traveller in Southern Europe gathers about him. I have also forgotten the old man’s name. But the palazzo in which he lived bore a certain historical title which happened to be very familiar to me. I remember wondering how it came to reach Messina.
In the olden days, of course, the days of splendour.
Will they ever return?
It struck me that the sufferings of the survivors would be alleviated if all the sheds in which they are living could be painted white or pearl-grey in order to protect them, as far as possible, from the burning rays of the sun. I mentioned the idea to an overseer.
“We are painting as fast as we can,” he replied. “An expensive matter, however. The Villagio Elena alone has cost us, in this respect, twenty thousand francs—with the greatest economy.”