On Ethical Grounds Alone - As
Safety-Valves - Such Nocturnal Feasts Ought To Be Kept Up In Regions Such
As These,
Where the country-folk have not our "facilities." Who would
grudge them these primordial joys, conducted under the indulgent
motherly
Eye of Madonna, and hallowed by antiquity and the starlit
heavens above? Every one is so happy and well-behaved. No bawling, no
quarrelsomeness, no staggering tipplers; a spirit of universal good
cheer broods over the assembly. Involuntarily, one thinks of the
drunkard-strewn field of battle at the close of our Highland games; one
thinks of God-fearing Glasgow on a Saturday evening, and of certain
other aspects of Glasgow life. . . .
I accepted the kindly proffered invitation of the priests to share their
dinner; they held out hopes of some sort of sleeping accommodation as
well. It was a patriarchal hospitality before that fire of logs (the
night had grown chilly), and several other guests partook of it,
forestal inspectors and such-like notabilities - one lady among them who,
true to feudal traditions, hardly spoke a word the whole evening. I was
struck, as I have sometimes been, at the attainments of these country
priests; they certainly knew our Gargantuan novelists of the Victorian
epoch uncommonly well. Can it be that these great authors are more
readable in Italian translations than in the original? One of them took
to relating, in a strain of autumnal humour, experiences of his life in
the wilds of Bolivia, where he had spent many years among the Indians;
my neighbour, meanwhile, proved to be steeped in Horatian lore.
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