Our people are much too earnest to allow that a view could have anything to do with taking people up to the top of a hill where there was a cathedral, or that people could be “merry” while on an errand connected with religion.
On leaving this place I wanted to say good-bye to Signora Bonvicino, and could not find her; after a time I heard she was at the fountain, so I went and found her on her knees washing her husband’s and her own clothes, with her pretty round arms bare nearly to the shoulder. It never so much as occurred to her to mind being caught at this work.
Some months later, shortly before winter, I returned to the same inn for a few days, and found it somewhat demoralised. There had been grand doings of some sort, and, though the doings were over, the moral and material débris were not yet quite removed. The famiglia Bonvicino was gone, and so was Cricco. The cook, the new waiter, and the landlord (who sings a good comic song upon occasion) had all drunk as much wine as they could carry; and later on I found Veneranda, the one-eyed old chambermaid, lying upon my bed fast asleep. I afterwards heard that, in spite of the autumnal weather, the landlord spent his night on the grass under the chestnuts, while the cook was found at four o’clock in the morning lying at full length upon a table under the veranda. Next day, however, all had become normal again.
Among our fellow-guests during this visit was a fiery-faced eructive butcher from Turin. A difference of opinion having arisen between him and his wife, I told the Signora that I would rather be wrong with her than right with her husband. The lady was delighted.
“Do you hear that, my dear?” said she. “He says he had rather be wrong with me than right with you. Isn’t he a naughty man?”
She said that if she died her husband was going to marry a girl of fifteen. I said: “And if your husband dies, ma’am, send me a dispatch to London, and I will come and marry you myself.” They were both delighted at this.
She told us the thunder had upset her and frightened her.
“Has it given you a headache?”
She replied: No; but it had upset her stomach. No doubt the thunder had shaken her stomach’s confidence in the soundness of its opinions, so as to weaken its proselytising power. By and by, seeing that she ate a pretty good dinner, I inquired:
“Is your stomach better now, ma’am?”