In Troubador-Land | Page 4

piston of a pop-gun, and is driving all the accumulated
gases charged with the germs of typhoid fever into every house which
has communication with the sewers. There is no help for it, the
poisonous vapours must be forced out of the drains and must be forced
into the houses. That is why, with a rise of the Tiber, typhoid fever is
certain to break out in Rome.
As I went over Ponte S. Angelo I was wont to look over the parapet at
the opening of the sewer that carried off the dregs of that portion of the
city where I was residing. One day I looked for it, and looked in vain.
The Tiber had swelled and was overflowing its banks, and for a week
or fortnight there could be no question, not a sewer in the vast city
would be free to do anything else but mischief. I did not go on to the
Vatican galleries that day. I could not have enjoyed the statues in the
Braccio Nuovo, nor the frescoes in the Loggia. I went home, found
Messrs. Allen's letter, packed my Gladstone bag, and bolted. I shall
never learn who got the microbe destined for me, which I dodged.
I went to Florence; at the inn where I put up--one genuinely Italian,
Bonciani's,--I made an acquaintance, a German Jew, a picture-dealer
with a shop in a certain capital, no matter which, editor of a
_bric-à-brac_ paper, and a right merry fellow. I introduce him to the
reader because he afforded me some information concerning Provence.

He had a branch establishment--never mind where, but in
Provence--and he had come to Florence to pick up pictures and
_bric-à-brac_.
Our acquaintance began as follows. We sat opposite each other at table
in the evening. A large rush-encased flask is set before each guest in a
swing carriage, that enables him to pour out his glassful from the
big-bellied flask without effort. Each flask is labelled variously Chianti,
Asti, Pomino, but all the wines have a like substance and flavour, and
each is an equally good light dinner-wine. A flask when full costs three
francs twenty centimes; and when the guest falls back in his seat, with a
smile of satisfaction on his face, and his heart full of good will towards
all men, for that he has done his dinner, then the bottle is taken out,
weighed, and the guest charged the amount of wine he has consumed.
He gets a fresh flask at every meal.
"Du lieber Himmel!" exclaimed my _vis-à-vis_. "I do b'lieve I hev
drunk dree francs. Take up de flasche and weigh her. Tink so?"
"I can believe it without weighing the bottle," I replied.
"And only four sous--twenty centimes left!" exclaimed the old
gentleman, meditatively. "But four sous is four sous. It is de price of
mine paper"--brightening in his reflections--"I can but shell one copy
more, and I am all right." Brightening to greater brilliancy as he turns
to me: "Will you buy de last number of my paper? She is in my pocket.
She is ver' interesting. Oh! ver' so. Moche information for two pence."
"I shall be charmed," I said, and extended twenty centimes across the
table.
"Ach Tausend! Dass ist herrlich!" and he drew off the last drops of
Pomino. "Now I will tell you vun ding. Hev you been in Provence?"
"Provence! Why--I am on my way there, now."
"Den listen to me. Ebery peoples hev different ways of doing de same
ding. You go into a cabaret dere, and you ask for wine. De patron

brings you a bottle, and at de same time looks at de clock and wid a bit
of chalk he mark you down your time. You say you will drink at two
pence, or dree pence, or four pence. You drink at dat price you have
covenanted for one hour, you drink at same price anodder hour, and
you sleep--but you pay all de same, wedder you drink or wedder you
sleep, two pence, or dree pence, or four pence de hour. It is an old
custom. You understand? It is de custom of de country--of La belle
Provence."
"I quite understand that it is to the interest of the taverner to make his
customers drunk."
"Drunk!" repeated my Mosaic acquaintance. "I will tell you one ding
more, ver' characteristic of de nationalities. A Frenchman--_il boit_; a
German--_er sauft_; and an Englishman--he gets fresh. Der you hev de
natures of de dree peoples as in a picture. De Frenchman, he looks to de
moment, and not beyond. Il boit. De German, he looks to de end. Er
sauft. De Englishman, he sits down fresh and intends to get fuddled;
but he is a hypocrite. He does not say de truth to hisself nor