the bathing festa.  I had made another engagement and there was an end of it.  The corporal, on the other hand, had spared no expense in the manner of his refusal, nothing short of two months’ imprisonment could have prevented him from coming with us.  We English ought to be able to do this and some of us, I suppose, can, but there is no Italian who cannot.  The French are polite, but not always to be trusted.  A Frenchman, speaking of an Englishman to whom I had introduced him, said to me—

“He speaks French worse than you do.”

Any Italian, wishing to express a similar idea, would have said—

“He speaks Italian, it is true, but not so well as you do.”

My meditations were interrupted by Angelo who had been taking stock of our possessions and, on looking into the basket, exclaimed with disgust that we had been robbed of our fish.  It was the first I had heard about our fish, but he said the brigadier had given us ten and he had put them into the basket.  How could they have got out again?  All the afternoon we had been

surrounded by coastguards and policemen whose profession is, as every one knows, to prevent robbery and to take up thieves.  Angelo was furious and wanted to drive back and complain to the brigadier, but, on looking further through the basket, we found there were still two fish and I said they would be quite enough for supper—with the sparrows—and he finally agreed that we had better do nothing, it might look as though we thought the brigadier was not up to his business.

“And when the tailor is wearing a coat that does not fit him,” said Angelo, “it is rude to tell him of it.”

So we drove on among the cistus bushes and I asked him about the lottery.  Every Saturday morning ninety cards numbered from one to ninety are put into a wheel of fortune and a blind-folded child from the orphan asylum publicly draws out five.  Italy is divided into several districts and a drawing takes place in the chief town of each, the winning numbers are telegraphed to the lottery offices all over the country and afterwards posted up and published in the newspapers.  Any one wishing to try his luck chooses one or more numbers and

buys a ticket and this choosing of the numbers is a very absorbing business.  In the neighbourhood of Castelvetrano at that time the favourite numbers were five and twenty-six and the people were betting on those numbers when they had no special reason for choosing any others.  Angelo could not tell why these two numbers were preferred, he could only say that the people found them sympathetic and, as a matter of fact, twenty-six had come out the day before.  There are many ways of choosing a number if you find five and twenty-six unsympathetic; you can wait till something remarkable happens to you, look it out in “the useful book that knows” and then bet on its number, for everything really remarkable has a number in the book and, if you do not possess a copy, it can be consulted in a shop as the Post Office Directory can be consulted in London.  Or, if nothing remarkable happens to you in real life, perhaps you may have dreamt of a lady in a white dress, or of a man whetting a scythe, or of meeting a snake in the road—anything will do, so long as it strikes you at the time.  When you see the country people coming into town on market day you may be sure that each one

has received instructions from relations and friends at home to put something on a number for them.

Some make a practice of gambling every week, others only try their luck when they have a few spare soldi, others only when they have witnessed something irresistibly striking.  A favourite way of choosing a number is to get into conversation with certain old monks who have a reputation for spotting winners, if I may so speak.  You do not ask the monk for a number outright, you engage him in conversation on general topics and as he understands what is expected of him, though he pretends he does not, he will presently make some such irrelevant remark as, “Do you like flowers?” whereupon you rapidly bring the interview to a conclusion and, if you do not know the number for “flower,” you look it out in the book and bet on it.  It occurred to me that possibly that was what the brigadier had been doing with me when he took me into his room to wash.

“Of course it was,” said Angelo; “he did not really want you to wash your hands, he wanted to get a number out of you.”

“Did he get one?” said I.

“He told me to put his money on 14.”

“That must have been because I said I paid 14 francs a metre for this cloth.  But he changed that afterwards.”

“Yes,” replied Angelo.  “He thought the number that came out of your packet of cigarettes would be better.”

Angelo was not strictly right about the brigadier not wanting me to wash, he said so merely to agree with me, for in Sicily, among those who have not become sophisticated by familiarity with money and its little ways nor cosmopolitanized by travel, and whose civilization remains unmodified by northern and western customs, it is usual for the host to give his guest an opportunity to wash after eating.  Sometimes the lady of the house has herself taken me into her bedroom, poured out the water and held the basin while I have washed; she has then handed me the towel and presently escorted me back to the sitting-room.

We soon overtook a man who had caught a rabbit and wanted to sell it for a lira and a half.  Angelo bargained with him for ever so long and, being at last satisfied that the rabbit was freshly killed, bought it for a lira and put it into the basket, saying he would

cook it for supper, and that no doubt the Madonna had sent it to make up for the loss of the fish.

I asked him what I must do to get a ticket in the lottery for the following Saturday.  He replied that his cousin would be happy to sell me one and, if I would settle how much to risk and what number to put it on, he would take me to the office in the morning.  I said I would risk a lira, which he thought overdoing it, as he and his friends seldom risked more than four or five soldi, but there was still the troublesome matter of the number.  He asked whether anything unusual had happened to me lately, either in real life or in a dream.  I told him that I seldom remembered a dream, but that I had had an unusually delightful day in real life at Selinunte.  In his capacity of padrone he acknowledged the compliment, but feared there would be no number for that in the book.  Then I asked if there was likely to be a number for having breakfast with a coastguard as it was the first time I had done so.  He mused and said no doubt there would be a number for breakfast and another for coastguard, but not for the combination.  Could not we add the two numbers together

and bet on whatever they amounted to, if it were not over 90?  Angelo would not hear of anything of the kind; we must think of something less complicated.  It would never have occurred to him to read for Metaphysics under M and for China under C, and combine the information into the article that appeared in the Eatanswill Gazette as a review of a work on Chinese Metaphysics.  He asked if I had not lately had “una disgrazia qualunque.”  I reminded him of the theft of our fish, but that did not satisfy him, he considered it too trivial, though he had made enough fuss about it at the time, and 17, which in Sicily is one of