While I was doing so, a gentleman
told me that a large breach in the wall was made a few years ago,
and a part of the wall found to be hollow, the bottom of the hollow
part being unwittingly removed, there fell through a skeleton in a
full suit of armour. Others, whom I asked, had heard nothing of
this.
Talking of hawks, I saw a good many boys with tame young hawks in
the villages round about. There was a tame hawk at the station of
S. Ambrogio. The station-master said it used to go now and again
to the church-steeple to catch sparrows, but would always return in
an hour or two. Before my stay was over it got in the way of a
passing train and was run over.
Young birds are much eaten in this neighbourhood. The houses and
barns, not to say the steeples of the churches, are to be seen
stuck about with what look like terra-cotta water-bottles with the
necks outwards. Two or three may be seen in the illustration on p.
113 outside the window that comes out of the roof, on the left-hand
side of the picture. I have seen some outside an Italian
restaurant near Lewisham. They are artificial bird's-nests for the
sparrows to build in: as soon as the young are old enough they are
taken and made into a pie. The church-tower near the Hotel de la
Poste at Lanzo is more stuck about with them than any other
building that I have seen.
Swallows and hawks are about the only birds whose young are not
eaten. One afternoon I met a boy with a jay on his finger: having
imprudently made advances to this young gentleman in the hopes of
getting acquainted with the bird, he said he thought I had better
buy it and have it for my dinner; but I did not fancy it. Another
day I saw the padrona at the inn-door talking to a lad, who pulled
open his shirt-front and showed some twenty or thirty nestlings in
the simple pocket formed by his shirt on the one side and his skin
upon the other. The padrona wanted me to say I should like to eat
them, in which case she would have bought them; but one cannot get
all the nonsense one hears at home out of one's head in a moment,
and I am afraid I preached a little. The padrona, who is one of
the most fascinating women in the world, and at sixty is still
handsome, looked a little vexed and puzzled: she admitted the
truth of what I said, but pleaded that the boys found it very hard
to gain a few soldi, and if people didn't kill and eat one thing,
they would another.
