resque ruffians hovering about in the
gloom of the garden; towards the end of dinner they wandered into the
circle of the electric light and resolved themselves into Carmelo and
Rosario. We invited them to sit down, gave them wine and cigarettes and
talked over the changes that had taken place in the town since I had last
been there.

When they had gone, I asked Peppino about Rosario's misfortune and learnt
that he had been put into prison for stabbing his father. He had only
wounded him, and Peppino thought the father had probably been in the
wrong, for he has a bad history in the books of the police, but Rosario
had not done himself any good over it, because, of course, the crime and
its consequences have now gone down into his own history.

An Englishman may be a mass of prejudices, but I confess I did not like
the idea of hob-nobbing with a would-be parricide and determined that
Rosario should not drive me any more; if I wanted a carriage, Carmelo
should get leave of his padrone and take me.

Next morning, while I was having my coffee, there was a sound of passing
music; I recognized it as belonging to a funeral, and asked Peppino if he
knew who was dead. Several people were dead and he did not know which
this was, unless it was old Baldassare; it must be either a married woman
or a grown-up man. I asked how he knew that. He replied that when
apprenticed to his father, who had been sagrestano before taking the
hotel, he had learnt all about the ceremonies of the Church.

"They do this," he said, "when it is a married lady dead or a grown man.
If it shall be the woman dead unmarried or a boy dead, then shall it be a
different song, a different ring of bell and the dead shall go very
directly in the paradiso; it is like the--please, what is fuochi
artificiali? Excuse me, it is the rocket; prestissimo and St. Peter he
don't be asking no question. Did you understand?"

He then diverged to ceremonies connected with last illnesses--

"When the doctor is coming it is telling always that you would be good of
the malady, but when the priest is coming it is telling that you are
finished. This is not a good thing. It is difficult to hope when the
doctor is shaking the head and is telling 'Please, you; go, catch the
priest quickly, quickly.' And sometimes the notary, the man of law, if
the malade is having money; if no money, it is the notary not at all.
When the doctor is coming out, the priest is coming in, and