tion
and, by being satisfied with very little and very poor evidence, they
make things easy for S. Alfio. But they could not tell you this
themselves, they are half asleep about it."

I said: "Of course they are half asleep about it, and all S. Alfio's
interests are bound up in their remaining so. They are not only asleep,
they are dreaming, as the Red King dreamt of Alice. If they were to wake
up S. Alfio would go out--bang!--just like a candle."

Alice and the Red King were as unknown to Joe as Poins or Moliere or
Dickens. I did my best to explain the allusion, but I doubt whether I
succeeded, for when I had finished he only said that Tweedledum and
Tweedledee had better not go about saying things like that, or their
bishop would be warning them to be on their guard as he warned the
Canonico Recupero. I must try whether he will understand better if I
send him a copy of _Through the Looking-Glass_ for his next onomastico.
He told me something which makes me suspect that the people must have a
dim feeling of how things really are. It seems that sometimes, though
rarely, it pleases them to pretend to believe that their padrone has
displeased them. Then they half wake up and depose him; but nothing
comes of it, they only choose a new one or, after a short time, reinstate
the old one.

We went to a house on the route and sat on a balcony in the sunset and
the drunken people pelted down-hill, smothered in the golden glory of the
dust they raised, banging their tambourines, blowing their whistles, and
singing that now the festa was over they must go home and work to pay the
debts it had run them into. It was no more use to think of stopping them
to see the pictures now than when they were going out; so I pigeon-holed
what the carts say about S. Alfio with my poor mother's problem about
what influence people who never go to church have over their servants.
The cavalli mafiosi and the carts were stuck about with coloured feathers
and festooned with bunches of garlic, with flowers, with lumps of lard,
with little flags and ribbons, with garlands of caruba beans and with
vetch. The flags, the ribbons, the flowers and the feathers were, I
suppose, for gaiety and festa--pour faire la frime--but garlic has some
magically beneficent properties; not only does it avert the evil eye, it
is also a symbol of robust health, so that instead of replying to "How do
you do?" by saying "As right as rain," they reply, "As right as ga