In Point Of Method, At Least, There Is Nothing To Choose Between The
Exactions Of The Municipal And Governmental Ruffians.
I once saw an old
woman fined fifty francs for having in her possession a pound of
sea-salt.
By what logic will you make it clear to ignorant people that
it is wrong to take salt out of the sea, whence every one takes fish
which are more valuable? The waste of time employed over red tape alone
on these occasions would lead to a revolution anywhere save among men
inured by long abuses to this particular form of tyranny. No wonder the
women of the country-side, rather than waste three precious hours in
arguments about a few cheeses, will smuggle them past the authorities
under the device of being enceintes; no wonder their wisest old men
regard the paternal government as a successfully organized swindle,
which it is the citizen's bounden duty to frustrate whenever possible.
Have you ever tried to convey - in legal fashion - a bottle of wine from
one town into another; or to import, by means of a sailing-boat, an old
frying-pan into some village by the sea? It is a fine art, only to be
learnt by years of apprenticeship. The regulations on these subjects,
though ineffably childish, look simple enough on paper; they take no
account of that "personal element" which is everything in the south, of
the ruffled tempers of those gorgeous but inert creatures who, disturbed
in their siestas or mandolin-strummings, may keep you waiting half a
day while they fumble ominously over some dirty-looking scrap of paper.
For on such occasions they are liable to provoking fits of
conscientiousness. This is all very well, my dear sir, but - Ha! Where,
where is that certificate of origin, that stamp, that lascia-passare?
And all for one single sou!
No wonder even Englishmen discover that law-breaking, in Italy, becomes
a necessity, a rule of life.
And, soon enough, much more than a mere necessity. . . .
For even as the traveller new to Borneo, when they offer him a
durian-fruit, is instantly brought to vomiting-point by its odour, but
after a few mouthfuls declares it to be the very apple of Paradise, and
marvels how he could have survived so long in the benighted lands where
such ambrosial fare is not; even as the true connaisseur who, beholding
some rare scarlet idol from the Tingo-Tango forests, at first casts it
aside and then, light dawning as he ponders over those monstrous
complexities, begins to realize that they, and they alone, contain the
quintessential formulae of all the fervent dreamings of Scopas and
Michelangelo; even as he who first, upon a peak in Darien, gazed
awestruck upon the grand Pacific slumbering at his feet, till presently
his senses reeled at the blissful prospect of fresh regions unrolling
themselves, boundless, past the fulfilment of his fondest hopes - - -
Even so, in Italy, the domesticated Englishman is amazed to find that he
possesses a sense hitherto unrevealed, opening up a new horizon, a new
zest in life - the sense of law-breaking.
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