“Jamais, jamais, monsieur; j’ai un respect énorme pour l’Eglise Catholique.”
“Monsieur, faites comme chez vous; allez où vous voulez; vous trouverez toutes les portes ouvertes. Amusez-vous bien.”
He then explained to me that the castle had never been a properly fortified place, being intended only as a summer residence for the barons of Bussoleno, who used to resort hither during the extreme heat, if times were tolerably quiet. After this he left me. Taking him at his word, I walked all round, but there was only a shell remaining; the rest of the building had evidently been burnt, even the wing in which the present proprietor resides being, if I remember rightly, modernised. The site, however, and the sloping meadows which the castle crowns, are of extreme beauty.
I now walked down to San Giorio, and found a small inn where I could get bread, butter, eggs, and good wine. I was waited upon by a good-natured boy, the son of the landlord, who was accompanied by a hawk that sat always either upon his hand or shoulder. As I looked at the pair I thought they were very much alike, and certainly they were very much in love with one another. After dinner I sketched the castle. While I was doing so, a gentleman told me that a large breach in the wall was made a few years ago, and a part of the wall found to be hollow, the bottom of the hollow part being unwittingly removed, there fell through a skeleton in a full suit of armour. Others, whom I asked, had heard nothing of this.
Talking of hawks, I saw a good many boys with tame young hawks in the villages round about. There was a tame hawk at the station of S. Ambrogio. The station-master said it used to go now and again to the church-steeple to catch sparrows, but would always return in an hour or two. Before my stay was over it got in the way of a passing train and was run over.
Young birds are much eaten in this neighbourhood. The houses and barns, not to say the steeples of the churches, are to be seen stuck about with what look like terra-cotta water-bottles with the necks outwards. Two or three may be seen in the illustration on p. 113 outside the window that comes out of the roof, on the left-hand side of the picture. I have seen some outside an Italian restaurant near Lewisham. They are artificial bird’s-nests for the sparrows to build in: as soon as the young are old enough they are taken and made into a pie. The church-tower near the Hotel de la Poste at Lanzo is more stuck about with them than any other building that I have seen.
Swallows and hawks are about the only birds whose young are not eaten. One afternoon I met a boy with a jay on his finger: having imprudently made advances to this young gentleman in the hopes of getting acquainted with the bird, he said he thought I had better buy it and have it for my dinner; but I did not fancy it. Another day I saw the padrona at the inn-door talking to a lad, who pulled open his shirt-front and showed some twenty or thirty nestlings in the simple pocket formed by his shirt on the one side and his skin upon the other. The padrona wanted me to say I should like to eat them, in which case she would have bought them; but one cannot get all the nonsense one hears at home out of one’s head in a moment, and I am afraid I preached a little. The padrona, who is one of the most fascinating women in the world, and at sixty is still handsome, looked a little vexed and puzzled: she admitted the truth of what I said, but pleaded that the boys found it very hard to gain a few soldi, and if people didn’t kill and eat one thing, they would another. The result of it all was that I determined for the future to leave young birds to their fate; they and the boys must settle that matter between themselves. If the young bird was a boy, and the boy a young bird, it would have been the boy who was taken ruthlessly from his nest and eaten. An old bird has no right to have a homestead, and a young bird has no right to exist at all, unless they can keep both homestead and existence out of the way of boys who are in want of half-pence. It is all perfectly right, and when we go and stay among these charming people, let us do so as learners, not as teachers.
I watched the padrona getting my supper ready. With what art do not these people manage their fire. The New Zealand Maoris say the white man is a fool: “He makes a large fire, and then has to sit away from it; the Maori makes a small fire, and sits over it.” The scheme of an Italian kitchen-fire is that there shall always be one stout log smouldering on the hearth, from which a few live coals may be chipped off if wanted, and put into the small square gratings which are used for stewing or roasting. Any warming up, or shorter boiling, is done on the Maori principle of making a small fire of light dry wood, and feeding it frequently. They economise everything. Thus I saw the padrona wash some hen’s eggs well in cold water; I did not see why she should wash them before boiling them, but presently the soup which I was to have for my supper began to boil. Then she put the eggs into the soup and boiled them in it.
After supper I had a talk with the padrone, who told me I was working too hard. “Totam noctem,” said he in Latin, “lavoravimus et nihil incepimus.” (“We have laboured all night and taken nothing.”) “Oh!” he continued, “I have eyes and ears in my head.” And as he spoke, with his right hand he drew down his lower eyelid, and with his left pinched the pig of his ear. “You will be ill if you go on like this.” Then he laid his hand along his cheek, put his head on one side, and shut his eyes, to imitate a sick man in bed. On this I arranged to go an excursion with him on the day following to a farm he had a few miles off, and to which he went every Friday.