A. Fool!
B. Thou!
A. Liar!
B. Thou!
E via in seguito! At last the assailant, beating her breast with both hands, and tempestuously swaying her person back and forth, wreaked her scorn in one wild outburst of vituperation, and returned finally to her tub, wisely saying, on the purple verge of asphyxiation, “O, non discorre più con gente.”
I returned half an hour later, and she was laughing and playing sweetly with her babe.
It suits the passionate nature of the Italians to have incredible ado about buying and selling, and a day’s shopping is a sort of campaign, from which the shopper returns plundered and discomfited, or laden with the spoil of vanquished shopmen.
The embattled commercial transaction is conducted in this wise:
The shopper enters, and prices a given article. The shopman names a sum of which only the fervid imagination of the South could conceive as corresponding to the value of the goods.
The purchaser instantly starts back with a wail of horror and indignation, and the shopman throws himself forward over the counter with a protest that, far from being dear, the article is ruinously cheap at the price stated, though they may nevertheless agree for something less.