The
condiment could not be used save for kitchen purposes, and then only on
certain days of the week; he was liable to heavy penalties if it became
known that one of his guests.... However, since he assumed me to be a
prudent person, he would undertake to supply a due allowance to-morrow
and thenceforward, though never in the public dining-room; never, never
in the dining-room!
That is the charm of Italy, I said to myself. These folks are reasonable
and gifted with imagination. They make laws to shadow forth an ideal
state of things and to display their good intentions towards the
community at large; laws which have no sting for the exceptional type of
man who can evade them--the sage, the millionaire, and the "friend of
the family." Never in the dining-room. Why, of course not. Catch me
breakfasting in any dining-room.
Was it possible? There, at luncheon in the dining-room, while devouring
those miserable macaroni made with war-time flour, I beheld an over-tall
young Florentine lieutenant shamelessly engulfing huge slices of what
looked uncommonly like genuine butter, a miniature mountain of which
stood on a platter before him, and overtopped all the other viands. I
could hardly believe my eyes. How about those regulations? Pointing to
this golden hillock, I inquired softly:
"From the cow?"
"From the cow."
"Whom does one bribe?"
He enjoyed a special dispensation, he declared--he need not bribe.
Returned from Albania with shattered health, he had been sent hither to
recuperate.
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