Let the race prune chestnuts for a couple of hundred
generations or so, and it will have little trouble with its toes.
Of course, the pruners fall sometimes, but very rarely. I remember
in the Val Mastallone seeing a votive picture of a poor lady in a
short petticoat and trousers trimmed with red round the bottom who
was falling head foremost from the top of a high tree, whose leaves
she had been picking, and was being saved by the intervention of
two saints who caught her upon two gridirons. Such accidents,
however, and, I should think, such interventions, are exceedingly
rare, and as a rule the peasants venture freely into places which
in England no one but a sailor or a steeple-jack would attempt.
And so we left this part of Italy, wishing that more Hugo de
Montboissiers had committed more crimes and had had to expiate them
by building more sanctuaries.
CHAPTER XI - Lanzo
From S. Ambrogio we went to Turin, a city so well known that I need
not describe it. The Hotel Europa is the best, and, indeed, one of
the best hotels on the continent. Nothing can exceed it for
comfort and good cookery. The gallery of old masters contains some
great gems. Especially remarkable are two pictures of Tobias and
the angel, by Antonio Pollaiuolo and Sandro Botticelli; and a
magnificent tempera painting of the Crucifixion, by Gaudenzio
Ferrari - one of his very finest works. There are also several
other pictures by the same master, but the Crucifixion is the best.
From Turin I went alone to Lanzo, about an hour and a half's
railway journey from Turin, and found a comfortable inn, the Hotel
de la Poste. There is a fine fourteenth-century tower here, and
the general effect of the town is good.
One morning while I was getting my breakfast, English fashion, with
some cutlets to accompany my bread and butter, I saw an elderly
Italian gentleman, with his hand up to his chin, eyeing me with
thoughtful interest. After a time he broke silence.
"Ed il latte," he said, "serve per la suppa." {21}
I said that that was the view we took of it. He thought it over a
while, and then feelingly exclaimed -
"Oh bel!"
Soon afterwards he left me with the words -
"La! dunque! cerrea! chow! stia bene."
"La" is a very common close to an Italian conversation. I used to
be a little afraid of it at first. It sounds rather like saying,
"There, that's that. Please to bear in mind that I talked to you
very nicely, and let you bore me for a long time; I think I have
now done the thing handsomely, so you'll be good enough to score me
one and let me go." But I soon found out that it was quite a
friendly and civil way of saying good-bye.
The "dunque" is softer; it seems to say, "I cannot bring myself to
say so sad a word as 'farewell,' but we must both of us know that
the time has come for us to part, and so" -
"Cerrea" is an abbreviation and corruption of "di sua Signoria," -
"by your highness's leave." "Chow" I have explained already.
"Stia bene" is simply "farewell."
The principal piazza of Lanzo is nice. In the upper part of the
town there is a large school or college. One can see into the
school through a grating from the road. I looked down, and saw
that the boys had cut their names all over the desks, just as
English boys would do. They were very merry and noisy, and though
there was a priest standing at one end of the room, he let them do
much as they liked, and they seemed quite happy. I heard one boy
shout out to another, "Non c' e pericolo," in answer to something
the other had said. This is exactly the "no fear" of America and
the colonies. Near the school there is a field on the slope of the
hill which commands a view over the plain. A woman was mowing
there, and, by way of making myself agreeable, I remarked that the
view was fine. "Yes, it is," she answered; "you can see all the
trains."
The baskets with which the people carry things in this
neighbourhood are of a different construction from any I have seen
elsewhere. They are made to fit all round the head like something
between a saddle and a helmet, and at the same time to rest upon
the shoulders - the head being, as it were, ensaddled by the basket,
and the weight being supported by the shoulders as well as by the
head. Why is it that such contrivances as this should prevail in
one valley and not in another? If, one is tempted to argue, the
plan is a convenient one, why does it not spread further? If
inconvenient, why has it spread so far? If it is good in the
valley of the Stura, why is it not also good in the contiguous
valley of the Dora? There must be places where people using
helmet-made baskets live next door to people who use baskets that
are borne entirely by back and shoulders. Why do not the people in
one or other of these houses adopt their neighbour's basket? Not
because people are not amenable to conviction, for within a certain
radius from the source of the invention they are convinced to a
man. Nor again is it from any insuperable objection to a change of
habit. The Stura people have changed their habit - possibly for the
worse; but if they have changed it for the worse, how is it they do
not find it out and change again?
