But They Have A Beast-Virtue Hereabouts Which Compels
Respect - Contentment In Adversity.
In this point they resemble the
Russian peasantry.
And yet, who can pity the moujik? His cheeks are
altogether too round, and his morals too superbly bestial; he has
clearly been created to sing and starve by turns. But the Italian
peasant who speaks in the tongue of Homer and Virgil and Boccaccio is
easily invested with a halo of martyrdom; it is delightful to sympathize
with men who combine the manners of Louis Quatorze with the profiles of
Augustus or Plato, and who still recall, in many of their traits, the
pristine life of Odyssean days. Thus, they wear to-day the identical
"clouted leggings of oxhide, against the scratches of the thorns" which
old Laertes bound about his legs on the upland farm in Ithaka. They call
them "galandrine."
On occasions of drought or flood there is not a word of complaint. I
have known these field-faring men and women for thirty years, and have
yet to hear a single one of them grumble at the weather. It is not
indifference; it is true philosophy - acquiescence in the inevitable. The
grievances of cultivators of lemons and wholesale agriculturalists,
whose speculations are often ruined by a single stroke of the human pen
in the shape of new regulations or tariffs, are a different thing;
their curses are loud and long. But the bean-growers, dependent
chiefly on wind and weather, only speak of God's will.
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