“Yes, and it is true. There is no town like Naples for pleasure. Even your Paris, Emilio, with all its theatres, its cocottes, its restaurants—no, it is not Naples. No wonder the forestiere come here. In Naples they are free. They can do what they will. They know we shall not mind. We are never shocked.”
“And do you think we are easily shocked in Paris?”
“No, but it is not the same. You have not Vesuvius there. You have not the sea, you have not the sun.”
Artois began laughingly to protest against the last statement, but the Marchesino would not have it.
“No, no, it shines—I know that,—but it is not the sun we have here.”
He spoke to the seamen in the Neapolitan dialect. They were brown, muscular fellows. In their eyes were the extraordinary boldness and directness of the sea. Neither of them looked gay. Many of the Neapolitans who are much upon the sea have serious, even grave faces. These were intensely, almost overpoweringly male. They seemed to partake of the essence of the elements of nature, as if blood of the sea ran in their veins, as if they were hot with the grim and inner fires of the sun. When they spoke their faces showed a certain changefulness that denoted intelligence, but never lost the look of force, of an almost tense masculinity ready to battle, perpetually alive to hold its own.
The Marchesino was also very masculine, but in a different way and more consciously than they were. He was not cultured, but such civilization as he had endowed him with a power to catch the moods of others not possessed by these men, in whom persistence was more visible than adroitness, unless indeed any question of money was to the fore.
“We shall get to the Giuseppone by eight, Emilio,” the Marchesino said, dropping his conversation with the men, which had been about the best hour and place for their fishing. “Are you hungry?”
“I shall be,” said Artois. “This wind brings an appetite with it. How well you steer!”
The Marchesino nodded carelessly.