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Say an orange is worth a soldo: you get no more than a hundred for a florin, though the dealer will cheerfully go under that number if he can cheat you in the count. So in most things we found it better to let G. do the marketing in her own small Venetian fashion, and "guard our strangeness."
Maidens with water-jars on their heads which might have been dug up at Pompeii; priests with broad hats and huge cloaks; sailors with blue shirts and red girdles; urchins who almost instinctively cry for a "soldo" and break into the Tarantella if you look at them; quiet, grave, farmer-peasants with the Phrygian cap; coral-fishers fresh from the African coast with tales of storm and tempest and the Madonna's help make up group after group of Caprese life as one looks idly on, a life not specially truthful perhaps or moral or high-minded, but sunny and pleasant and pretty enough, and harmonizing in its own genial way with the sunshine and beauty around.
In order to climb the more easily, all the boys had daubed their hands with resin, which they call colophony, and as a matter of course it is that trader of a Garoffi who provides every one with it, in a powdered form, selling it at a soldo the paper hornful, and turning a pretty penny.
A month or two ago, the newspapers were full of the mobbing of trains starting with soldiers for Erythrea. Yet all that time, if you went down into the Campo de' Fiori you could find poems sold for a soldo, that only the people wrote and the people read, that were as patriotic as the poor King himself. 'Ah! I know, said Manisty. 'I have seen some of them.
"It sounds like men at a funeral." "Oh, they are very good ices, signorino. The Romans make splendid ices." Turkey followed the vitello. Maurice's guests were now completely at ease and perfectly happy. The consciousness that all this was going to be paid for, that they would not have to put their hands in their pockets for a soldo, warmed their hearts as the wine warmed their bodies.
He began presently almost to hate Salvatore, who evidently thought that Maurice was ready to wrong him, and who, nevertheless, grasped greedily at every soldo that came from the stranger's pocket, and touted perpetually for more. His attitude was hideous. Maurice pretended not to notice it, and was careful to keep on the most friendly possible terms with him.
They did not see him. They were absorbed in their conversation. "It will not hurt the Signora or the Signorina. The fattura della morte it is to harm Peppina. Has she not done us injury? Has she not taken my Patrigno from my mamma? Has she not made him mad? Is it not for her that he has been in prison, and that he has left my mamma without a soldo in the house?
Poor souls! they shall drink that pleasant morning away in the society of Antonino the best of Neapolitans, and at midnight, emptied of every soldo, shall arise, wrung with a fearful suspicion of treachery, and wander away under Antonino's guidance to seek the protection of the Consul; or, taking the law into their own hands, shall proceed to clean out, more Americano, the New York Coffee House, when Antonino shall develop into one of the landlords, and deal them the most artistic stab in Naples: handsome, worthy Antonino; tender-eyed, subtle, pitiless!
Half way back to Rome a picturesque little beggar, whose motley-coloured rags scarcely clothed his smooth brown limbs, suddenly sprang out of a corner where he had been in hiding with a great basket of violets, and threw the whole fragrant heap dexterously into Sylvie's carriage, crying out, "Bellissima Signora! Bellissima! Bellissima! Un soldo! Un soldo!"
Kenwick, taking his cue from the Colonel, had mischievously carried out the principle, by presenting a soldo to each one of the assembly having the slightest pretence to comeliness. Upon which the two Pollys, unable to tolerate such cruel discrimination, had offered prompt reparation to the feelings of the ugly ones.
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