One Might Enlarge The Argument And Deduce His Odd Insensibility To
Delicate Scents From The Fact That He Thrives In
An atmosphere saturated
with violent odours of all kinds; his dullness in regard to finer shades
of sound - from the
Shrieks of squalling babies and other domestic
explosions in which he lives from the cradle to the grave. That is why
these people have no "nerves"; terrific bursts of din, such as the
pandemonium of Piedigrotta, stimulate them in the same way that others
might be stimulated by a quartette of Brahms. And if they who are so
concerned about the massacre of small birds in this country would devote
their energies to the invention of a noiseless and yet cheap powder,
their efforts would at last have some prospects of success. For it is
not so much the joy of killing, as the pleasurable noise of the gun,
which creates these local sportsmen; as the sagacious "Ultramontain"
observed long ago. "Le napolitain est pas-sionne pour la chasse," he
says, "parce que les coups de fusil flattent son oreille." [Footnote:
I have looked him up in Jos. Blanc's "Bibliographic." His name was C.
Haller.] This ingenuous love of noise may be connected, in some way,
with their rapid nervous discharges.
I doubt whether intermediate convulsions have left much purity of Greek
blood in south Italy, although emotional travellers, fresh from the
north, are for ever discovering "classic Hellenic profiles" among the
people. There is certainly a scarce type which, for want of a better
hypothesis, might be called Greek:
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