"
In such chat my days pass by. I feel as though I had dropped down
somewhere in the Sabine Mountains, been well received in a house--Maria
is from Camarino, too,--and were living there hidden from the world
among these big children.
Yesterday, Uncle had his National Guard uniform on for the first time.
He came in to show himself. I told him that it suited him very well,
which delighted him. Filomena exhibited him with admiration. When Maria
came home later on, she asked the others at once: "Has the
_signore_ seen him? What did he say? Does not he want to see him
again?"
Written down a score of ritornellos; I have chosen the best of them.
Many of them are rather, or very, indecent. But, as Filomena says: "You
do not go to Hell for singing _canzone_; you cannot help what they
are like." The indecent ones she will only say at a terrific rate, and
not a second time. But if one pay attention, they are easy to
understand. They are a mixture of audacity and simple vulgarity. They
all begin with flowers. She is too undeveloped to share the educated
girl's abhorrence of things that are in bad taste; everything natural,
she thinks, can be said, and she speaks out, quite unperturbed. Still,
now she understands that there are certain things--impossible things--
that I do not like to hear her say.
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