The Wrath to Come
On the Monte Generoso a lady who sat next me at the table-d’hôte was complaining of a man in the hotel. She said he was a nuisance because he practised on the violin. I excused him by saying that I supposed some one had warned him to fly from the wrath to come, meaning that he had conceptions of an ideal world and was trying to get into it. (I heard a man say something like this many years ago and it stuck by me.)
The Beauties of Nature
A man told me that at some Swiss hotel he had been speaking enthusiastically about the beauty of the scenery to a Frenchman who said to him:
“Aimez-vous donc les beautés de la nature? Pour moi je les abborre.”
The Late King Vittorio Emanuele
Cavaliere Negri, at Casale-Monferrato, told me not long since that when he was a child, during the troubles of 1848 and 1849, the King was lunching with his (Cav. Negri’s) father who had provided the best possible luncheon in honour of his guest. The King said:
“I can eat no such luncheon in times like these—give me some garlic.”
The garlic being brought, he ate it along with a great hunch of bread, but would touch nothing else.