with illness, and as no one took his place I suppose the regular
distribution of newspapers in Cotrone was suspended. When the poor
fellow again showed himself, he had a sorry visage; he sat down by my
bedside (rain dripping from his hat, and mud, very thick, upon his
boots) to give an account of his sufferings. I pictured the sort of
retreat in which he had lain during those miserable hours. My own
chamber contained merely the barest necessaries, and, as the gentleman
of Cosenza would have said, “left something to be desired” in point of
cleanliness. Conceive the places into which Cotrone’s poorest have to
crawl when they are stricken with disease. I admit, however, that the
thought was worse to me at that moment than it is now. After all, the
native of Cotrone has advantages over the native of a city slum; and it
is better to die in a hovel by the Ionian Sea than in a cellar at
Shoreditch.
The position of my room, which looked upon the piazza, enabled me to
hear a great deal of what went on in the town. The life of Cotrone
began about three in the morning; at that hour I heard the first
voices, upon which there soon followed the bleating of goats and the
tinkling of ox-bells. No doubt the greater part of the poor people were
in bed by eight o’clock every evening; only those who had dealings in
the outer world were stirring when the
and I suspect that some of these snatched a nap before that late hour.
Throughout the day there sounded from the piazza a ceaseless clamour of
voices, such a noise as in England would only rise from some excited
crowd on a rare occasion; it was increased by reverberations from the
colonnade which runs all round in front of the shops. When the
north-east gale had passed over, there ensued a few days of sullen
calm, permitting the people to lead their ordinary life in open air. I
grew to recognize certain voices, those of men who seemingly had
nothing to do but to talk all day long. Only the sound reached me; I
wish I could have gathered the sense of these interminable harangues
and dialogues. In every country and every age those talk most who have
least to say that is worth saying. These tonguesters of Cotrone had
their predecessors in the public place of Croton, who began to gossip
before dawn, and gabbled unceasingly till after nightfall; with their
voices must often have mingled the bleating of goats or the lowing of
oxen, just as I heard the sounds to-day.
One day came a street organ, accompanied by singing, and how glad I
was! The first note of music, this, that I had heard at Cotrone. The
instrument played only two or three airs, and one of them became a
great favourite with the populace; very soon, numerous voices joined
with that of the singer, and all this and the following day the melody
sounded, near or far. It had the true characteristics of southern song;
rising tremolos, and cadences that swept upon a wail of passion; high
falsetto notes, and deep tum-tum of infinite melancholy. Scorned by the
musician, yet how expressive of a people’s temper, how suggestive of
its history! At the moment when this strain broke upon my ear, I was
thinking ill of Cotrone and its inhabitants; in the first pause of the
music I reproached myself bitterly for narrowness and ingratitude. All
the faults of the Italian people are whelmed in forgiveness as soon as
