They all
wore their hair tied behind in a short, thick queue which looked quite
dandified. "Here you are," I said to myself, as I ate my supper, "here
you are in the country from which such queer people used to come to
the Herr Pastor's with mouse-traps, and barometers, and pictures. How
much a man learns who makes up his mind not to stick close to his own
hearth-stone all his life!"
As I was thus eating my supper and meditating, a little man, who had
been sitting in a dim corner of the room over a glass of wine, darted
out of his nook at me like a spider. He was quite short and crooked,
and he had a big ugly head, with a long hooked nose and sparse red
whiskers, while his powdered hair stood on end all over his head as
if a hurricane had swept over it. He wore an old-fashioned, threadbare
dress-coat, short, plush breeches, and faded silk stockings. He had
once been in Germany, and prided himself upon his knowledge of German.
He sat down by me and asked a hundred questions, perpetually taking
snuff the while--Was I the _servitore_? When did we arrive? Had we
gone to Roma? All this I myself did not know, and really I could not
understand his gibberish. "_Parlez-vous francais_?" I asked him at
last in my distress. He shook his big head, and I was very glad, for
neither did I speak French. But it was of no use, he had taken me in
hand, and went on asking question after question; the more we parleyed
the less we understood each other, until at last we both grew angry,
and I actually thought the Signor would have liked to peck me with his
hooked beak, until the maids, who had been listening to our confusion
of tongues, laughed heartily at us.
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