'I want a bath,' said Van Brick, 'which way?'
'Have patience, signore. There are a great many English in Rome.'
'Farewell!' quoth Van Brick, turning on his heel, reflecting: 'That youth talks too much; he does it to conceal his ignorance; he don't know what a bath is.' Coming out of the church, he met a good-natured looking Roman girl, without any bonnet, as usual, going along with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread.
'Can you tell me where the bath is?'
'Chi lo sa, signore.'
This CHI LO SA, or, 'who knows?' of the Romans, is a shaft that would kill Paul Pry. It nearly throws an inquisitive man into convulsions. He meets it at every turn. The simplest question is knocked to pieces by it. So common is it for a Roman of the true plebs breed to give you this for an answer to almost every question, that Rocjean once won a hat from Caper in this wise: they stood one evening in front of a grocer's store, down by the Pantheon; it was brilliantly illuminated with hundreds of candles, displaying piles of hams, cheese, butter, eggs, etc., etc. Chandeliers constructed of egg-shells, where candles shone brightly, particularly struck Caper.
'You see,' said Rocjean, 'as anyone else can see, that those chandeliers are made of egg-shells. Now, I will bet you a hat that I will ask four men, one after another, who may come to look in this window, what those chandeliers are made of, and three at least, if not all four of them, will answer, 'Who knows?' (Chi lo sa.)
'Done!' said Caper.
Rocjean asked four men, one after another. All four answered; 'Who knows?'
But to continue the bath-hunt: Van Brick was thrown over by the girl's answer, and next asked an old woman, who was standing at the door of a house, buying broccoli from a man with a hand-cart.