Then I Descended Into The Gloom Of The Street.
The Familiar Odours Breathed Upon Me With Pungent Freshness, Wafted
Hither And Thither On A Mountain Breeze.
A glance upwards at the
narrow strip of sky showed a grey-coloured dawn, prelude, I feared,
of a dull day.
Evidently I was not the only traveller departing; on the truck just
laden I saw somebody else's luggage, and at the same moment there
came forth a man heavily muffled against the air, who, like myself,
began to look about for the porter. We exchanged greetings, and on
our walk to the station I learned that my companion, also bound for
Taranto, had been detained by illness for several days at the
Lionetti, where, he bitterly complained, the people showed him no
sort of attention. He was a commercial traveller, representing a
firm of drug merchants in North Italy, and for his sins (as he put
it) had to make the southern journey every year; he invariably
suffered from fever, and at certain places - of course, the least
civilized - had attacks which delayed him from three days to a
week. He loathed the South, finding no compensation whatever for the
miseries of travel below Naples; the inhabitants he reviled with
exceeding animosity. Interested by the doleful predicament of this
vendor of drugs (who dosed himself very vigorously), I found him a
pleasant companion during the day; after our lunch he seemed to
shake off the last shivers of his malady, and was as sprightly an
Italian as one could wish to meet - young, sharp-witted,
well-mannered, and with a pleasing softness of character.
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