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Selinunte depends for news upon chance visitors and Angelo had brought the winning numbers which he had got from a cousin of his in one of the lottery offices at Castelvetrano. The brigadier had lost and in giving his instructions for the next week's drawing seemed to experience great difficulty in making up his mind.
I told him I had had enough of the lottery at Castelvetrano. The brigadier was interested, so I told him about it and said I was afraid the reason I had lost was that my numbers had nothing to do with anything that had happened to me during the week. He confirmed what Peppino had said and added that he was always very careful about the choosing of his numbers.
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.
It does not matter, of course, so long as one gets the quails for supper, but if one really did want to know, one would have as much difficulty as in finding out how Orlando got hold of la Durlindana and where it originally came from. The student from Castelvetrano was still there with his melancholy eyes, studying philosophy.
One wet Saturday evening in May I found myself at Castelvetrano consulting Angelo, the guide, about the weather. His opinion was that it would clear up during the night; I said that if it did we would go to Selinunte, and this confirmed his view; so, on the understanding that there was to be no rain, I appointed him padrone of the expedition and promised to acquiesce in all his arrangements.
He said he found the mountain more suitable for his purpose than his native town because it was more tranquil. I had been at Castelvetrano, but had not noticed that it was a particularly noisy place, indeed, I could no more have distinguished between the tranquillity of Castelvetrano and that of the mountain than between the acute and the grave supertonic.
We asked if he could not come with us all the way to Castelvetrano and he seemed inclined to do so, but he had to patrol the coast in the direction of Marsala from eleven o'clock that night till eleven the next morning, and it was so annoying because, as he must go to Castelvetrano in a few days, he might almost just as well come with us now.
My two friends sat with me and introduced me to a student with a slight cast in one of his melancholy eyes, a misty tenor voice and the facile Italian smile, who had come up from Castelvetrano to study a little philosophy, and supped with me.
Driving back, I told Peppino about the lottery at Castelvetrano and how my numbers had lost. He inquired whether my birthday fell during the week I bought the ticket. It did not. "Then," said he, "of course you could not be winning and Angelo very stupid to let you play those numbers." It seems that numbers are no good unless they are connected with something that happens to you during the week.
When he arrived at Castelvetrano he was so knocked up by the journey and the change of air that he was obliged to go to bed, where he remained till it was time for him to get up and return to Chiasso, and this means that he was in bed for more than a fortnight, because his holiday was extended to twenty days in consideration of his illness.
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