which he knew the people could not cook just for the sake of reviling
their handiwork when it was presented. Therewith he spent incredibly
small sums; after growling and remonstrating and eating for more than
an hour, his bill would amount to seventy or eighty centesimi, wine
included. Every day he threatened to withdraw his custom; every day he
sent for the landlady, pointed out to her how vilely he was treated,
and asked how she could expect him to recommend the
acquaintances. On one occasion I saw him push away a plate of
something, plant his elbows on the table, and hide his face in his
hands; thus he sat for ten minutes, an image of indignant misery, and
when at last his countenance was again visible, it showed traces of
tears.
I dwell upon the question of food because it was on this day that I
began to feel a loss of appetite and found myself disgusted with the
dishes set before me. In ordinary health I have the happiest
qualification of the traveller, an ability to eat and enjoy the
familiar dishes of any quasi-civilized country; it was a bad sign when
I grew fastidious. After a mere pretence of dinner, I lay down in my
room to rest and read. But I could do neither; it grew plain to me that
I was feverish. Through a sleepless night, the fever manifestly
increasing, I wished that illness had fallen on me anywhere rather than
at Cotrone.
CHAPTER IX
MY FRIEND THE DOCTOR
In the morning I arose as usual, though with difficulty. I tried to
persuade myself that I was merely suffering from a violent attack of
dyspepsia, the natural result of
brought my breakfast I regarded it with resentful eye, feeling for the
moment very much like my grumbling acquaintance of the dinner hour. It
may be as well to explain that the breakfast consisted of very bad
coffee, with goat’s milk, hard, coarse bread, and goat’s butter, which
tasted exactly like indifferent lard. The so-called butter, by a
strange custom of Cotrone, was served in the emptied rind of a
spherical cheese—the small
sees everywhere in the South. I should not have liked to inquire where,
how, when, or by whom the substance of the cheese had been consumed.
Possibly this receptacle is supposed to communicate a subtle flavour to
the butter; I only know that, even to a healthy palate, the stuff was
rather horrible. Cow’s milk could be obtained in very small quantities,
but it was of evil flavour; butter, in the septentrional sense of the
word, did not exist.
It surprises me to remember that I went out, walked down to the shore,
and watched the great waves breaking over the harbour mole. There was a
lull in the storm, but as yet no sign of improving weather; clouds
drove swiftly across a lowering sky. My eyes turned to the Lacinian
promontory, dark upon the turbid sea. Should I ever stand by the sacred
column? It seemed to me hopelessly remote; the voyage an impossible
effort.
I talked with a man, of whom I remember nothing but his piercing eyes
steadily fixed upon me; he said there had been a wreck in the night, a
