He has since gone back to Milan, whence he came eighteen years ago, and
whither he has returned,--as he told me one acute day in the fall, when
all the winter hinted itself, and the painted leaves shuddered earthward
in the grove across the way,--to enjoy a little climate before he died
(_per goder un po' di dima prima di morire_). Our climate was the
only thing he had against us; in every other respect he was a New-
Englander, even to the early stages of consumption. He told me the story
of his whole life, and of how in his adventurous youth he had left Milan
and sojourned some years in Naples, vainly seeking his fortune there.
Afterwards he went to Greece, and set up his ancestral business of
greengrocer in Athens, faring there no better, but rather worse than in
Naples, because of the deeper wickedness of the Athenians, who cheated him
right and left, and whose laws gave him no redress. The Neapolitans were
bad enough, he said, making a wry face, but the Greeks!--and he spat the
Greeks out in the grass.
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