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Learn, then, that their national orchestras are composed of "zournas," which are shrill flutes; "salamouris," which are squeaky clarinets; mandolines, with copper strings, twanged with a feather; "tchianouris," violins, which are played upright; "dimplipitos," a kind of cymbals which rattle like hail on a window pane.
Then, for the wine to drink, three men came with mandolines and guitars, and sat in a corner playing their rapid tunes, while all danced on the dusty brick floor of the little parlour. No strange women were invited, only men; the young bloods from the big village on the lake, the wild men from above.
Instead of the angels swinging their censers which the painter of San Marco so lovingly drew, Giovanni's angels are little human boys, with grave sweet faces; happy children with a look of heaven in their eyes, as they play on their little lutes and mandolines.
Ah! what scenes shift and shuffle in the twinkle of the gas-jet in this opalescent liquid; the hot shimmer of the arena at the Seville bull-fight, with its swirl of color and movement; the torchlight procession of pilgrims round the church at Lourdes, with the one black nun praying by herself in a shadowy corner; the lovely valley of the Tauba, where the tinkle of the sheep-bells mingles with the Lutheran hymn blown to the four winds from the old church tower; wines that were red sunshine that was warm mandolines !" His voice died away as in exquisite reverie.
And then, at a half-hour's walk, there was the pretty pink-stuccoed village, with its hill-top church, its odd little shrines, its grim-grotesque ossuary, its faded frescoed house-fronts, its busy, vociferous, out-of-door Italian life: the cobbler tapping in his stall; women gossiping at their toilets; children sprawling in the dirt, chasing each other, shouting; men drinking, playing mora, quarrelling, laughing, singing, twanging mandolines, at the tables under the withered bush of the wine-shop; and two or three more pensive citizens swinging their legs from the parapet of the bridge, and angling for fish that never bit, in the impetuous stream below.
Many men and women wandered about in bands of ten or a dozen, singing in soft voices, above which now and then rose a few ringing tenor notes. There was laughter everywhere in the air; tambourines drummed and thumped and jingled, guitars twanged, and mandolines tinkled and quavered. From a dark lane somewhere off the broader thoroughfare, a single voice sang out in serenade.
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