When she had
finished, to my astonishment, she said to me, _exactly this_: "It
is Nature that is God, is it not so?"
An expression almost symbolical of the ignorance and credulity of the
Romans is their constant axiom, _Chi lo sa?_ (Who knows?) I said to
Maria the other day, after she had said it for the fourth time in a
quarter of an hour: "My good Maria! The beginning of wisdom is not to
fear God, but to say _Perche_? (why?), instead of _Chi lo sa_?"
Yesterday, while I was eating my dinner, I heard Filomena's story. She
came to Rome last December: "You think I came because Maria wanted to
help mother. I came to Rome because there was a man who wanted to marry
me." "What was his name?" "His name was Peppe." _"Lo mi' amore, che si
chiama Peppe."_... "Ah, I do not love him at all. No, the thing is
that at Camerino all the men beat their wives. My sister, for instance,
has always a black eye, and red stripes on her back. My friend Marietta
always gets beaten by her husband, and the more he beats her, the more
she loves him: sometimes she goes away from him for a few days to her
sister, but she always goes back again." "What has that to do with our
friend Peppe?" "Well, you see, mother knew that Peppe's brother beat his
wife all day and all night; so she would not give me to him.
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