"It Seems One Fares Better In The Province Than At Home.
You could not
get such bread in Rome, not if you offered fifty francs a pound."
As for myself, I had lost all interest in the bread by this time, but
grown fairly intimate with the wine, a rosy muscatel, faintly
sparkling - very young, but not altogether innocent.
There were flies, however, and dogs, and children. We ought to have
remained indoors. Thither we retired for coffee and cigars and a
liqueur, of the last of which my friend refused to partake. He fears and
distrusts all liqueurs; it is one of his many senile traits. The stuff
proved, to my surprise, to be orthodox Strega, likewise a rarity
nowadays.
It is a real shame - what is happening to Strega at this moment. It has
grown so popular that the country is flooded with imitations. There must
be fifty firms manufacturing shams of various degrees of goodness and
badness; I have met their travellers in the most unexpected places. They
reproduce the colour of Strega, its minty flavour - everything, in
short, except the essential: its peculiar strength of aroma and of
alcohol. They can afford to sell this poison at half the price of the
original, and your artful restaurateur keeps an old bottle or two of the
real product which he fills up, when empty, out of some hidden but
never-failing barrel of the fraudulent mixture round the corner,
charging you, of course, the full price of true Strega.
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