“All of them. Romans are very superstitious and my wife is a Roman. If you see a hunchback, it is good luck; if you see three, then your luck is magnificent and you have to swallow your saliva three times; on the other hand, if you see a humpbacked woman it is a bad omen and you must spit on the ground to keep away the jettatura. Three priests together is a very good sign. We ought all to get along very well in Rome, because we see three and up to thirty priests together.”
“A spider is also very significant,” said Kennedy; “in the morning it is of bad augury, and in the evening good.”
“And at noon?” asked Cæsar.
“At noon,” answered Lanza, laughing, “it means nothing to speak of. But if you wish to make sure whether it is a good auspice or a bad, you kill the spider and count its legs. If they are an even number, it is a good omen; if uneven, bad.”
“But I believe spiders always have an even number of legs,” said Cæsar.
“Certainly,” responded the old man; “but my wife swears they do not; that she has seen many with seven and nine legs. It is religious unreasonableness.”
“Are there many people like that, so credulous?” asked Cæsar.
“Oh, lots,” replied Lanza; “in the shops you will find amulets, horns, hands made of coral or horseshoes, all to keep away bad luck. My wife and the neighbour women play the lottery, by combining the numbers of their birthdays, and the ages of their fathers, their mothers, and their children. When some relative dies, they make a magic combination of the dates of birth and death, the day and the month, and buy a lottery ticket. They never win; and instead of realizing that their systems are of no avail, they say that they omitted to count in the number of letters in the name or something of that sort. It is comical, so much religion and so much superstition.”
“But you confuse religion and superstition, my friend,” said Kennedy.
“It’s all the same,” answered the old man, smiling his suavely ironical smile. “There is nothing except Nature.”