United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Who knows? they my serve as an introduction to the study of the English tongue. Not without cordiality was my leave-taking. The hostess confided to me that, in the first day of my illness, she had felt sure I should die. Everybody had thought so, she added gaily; even Dr. Sculco had shaken his head and shrugged his shoulders; much better, was it not, to be paying my bill?
Riccardo Sculco was a youngish man, with an open, friendly countenance. At once I liked him. After an examination, of which I quite understood the result, he remarked in his amiable, airy manner that I had "a touch of rheumatism"; as a simple matter of precaution, I had better go to bed for the rest of the day, and, just for the form of the thing, he would send some medicine.
A superstitious fear crept upon me; I remembered that my last visit had been to the cemetery. One thing was certain: I should never see the column of Hera's temple. I made my lament on this subject to Dr. Sculco, and he did his best to describe to me the scenery of the Cape.
Of course I suffered much from thirst, and Dr. Sculco startled me one day by asking if I liked tea. Tea? Was it really procurable? The Doctor assured me that it could be supplied by the chemist; though, considering how rarely the exotic was demanded, it might have lost something of its finer flavour whilst stored at the pharmacy. An order was despatched.
The dyspepsia I clung to this hypothesis was growing so violent that I had difficulty in breathing: before long I found it impossible to stand. My hostess was summoned, and she told me that Cotrone had "a great physician," by name "Dr. Scurco." Translating this name from dialect into Italian, I presumed that the physician's real name was Sculco, and this proved to be the case. Dr.
Sculco, he was much amused, and afterwards he often asked me whether I had had any more visioni. That gate of dreams was closed, but I shall always feel that, for an hour, it was granted to me to see the vanished life so dear to my imagination.
And dead is mine hostess, "the stout, slatternly, sleepy woman, who seemed surprised at my demand for food, but at length complied with it." But the little waiter is alive and now married; and Doctor Sculco still resides in his aristocratic palazzo up that winding way in the old town, with the escutcheon of a scorpion portentous emblem for a doctor over its entrance.
When first I spoke of this purpose to Dr. Sculco, he indulged my fancy, saying "Presently, presently!" A few days later, when I seriously asked him how soon I might with safety travel, his face expressed misgiving. Why go to Catanzaro? It was on the top of a mountain, and had a most severe climate; the winds at this season were terrible.
The Doctor addressed mine hostess of the Concordia as "thou," and with magnificent disdain refused to hear her excuses; she, the stout, noisy woman, who ruled her own underlings with contemptuous rigour, was all subservience before this social superior, and whined to him for pardon. "What water is this?" asked Dr. Sculco, sternly, taking up the corked jar that stood on the floor.
If I thanked him for anything, he took off his cap, bowed with comical dignity, and answered "Grazie a voi, Signore." Of course these people never used the third person feminine of polite Italian. Dr. Sculco did so, for I had begun by addressing him in that manner, but plainly it was not familiar to his lips.
Word Of The Day