He Did This With Unruffled Gravity, And As If It
Were The Only Thing To Do Under The Circumstances.
The young lady who was with us all the time enjoyed everything just
as much as we did; once, indeed, she thought they were going a
little too far - not as among themselves - but considering that there
were a couple of earnest-minded Englishmen with them:
The pair had
begun a short performance which certainly did look as if it might
develop into something a little hazardous. "Minga far tutto," she
exclaimed rather promptly - "Don't do all." So what the rest would
have been we shall never know.
Then we came to some precipices, whereon it at once occurred to the
two comedians that they would commit suicide. The pathetic way in
which they shared the contents of their pockets among us, and came
back more than once to give little additional parting messages
which occurred to them just as they were about to take the fatal
plunge, was irresistibly comic, and was the more remarkable for the
spontaneousness of the whole thing and the admirable way in which
the pair played into one another's hands. The deaf one even played
his deafness, making it worse than it was so as to heighten the
comedy. By and by we came to a stile which they pretended to have
a delicacy in crossing, but the lady helped them over. We
concluded that if these young men were average specimens of the
Italian student - and I should say they were - the Italian character
has an enormous fund of pure love of fun - not of mischievous fun,
but of the very best kind of playful humour, such as I have never
seen elsewhere except among Englishmen.
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