ing our way and we took
him in the carriage a little further. We asked if he could not come with
us all the way to Castelvetrano and he seemed inclined to do so, but he
had to patrol the coast in the direction of Marsala from eleven o'clock
that night till eleven the next morning, and it was so annoying because,
as he must go to Castelvetrano in a few days, he might almost just as
well come with us now. We hoped he would see his way to doing so and he
hesitated and appeared to be on the point of yielding, but finally made
the Herculean choice of duty before pleasure on the very sensible ground
that, if it should be discovered he had deserted his post, he would be
put into prison for two months. With the brigadier and all the guards in
the secret, it seemed impossible that he should escape detection, so we
pressed the invitation no further and took leave of him after exchanging
names and addresses and promising to send postcards to one another.

As we drove away I could not but draw a comparison in my mind between the
corporal's refusal of my invitation and mine of his, and I was ashamed of
myself for the way I had scamped the bathing festa. I had made another
engagement and there was an end of it. The corporal, on the other hand,
had spared no expense in the manner of his refusal, nothing short of two
months' imprisonment could have prevented him from coming with us. We
English ought to be able to do this and some of us, I suppose, can, but
there is no Italian who cannot. The French are polite, but not always to
be trusted. A Frenchman, speaking of an Englishman to whom I had
introduced him, said to me--

"He speaks French worse than you do."

Any Italian, wishing to express a similar idea, would have said--

"He speaks Italian, it is true, but not so well as you do."

My meditations were interrupted by Angelo who had been taking stock of
our possessions and, on looking into the basket, exclaimed with disgust
that we had been robbed of our fish. It was the first I had heard about
our fish, but he said the brigadier had given us ten and he had put them
into the basket. How could they have got out again? All the afternoon
we had been surrounded by coastguards and policemen whose profession is,
as every one knows, to prevent robbery and to take up thieves. Angelo
was furious and wanted to drive back and complain to the brigadier, but,
on looking further through the basket, we found there were still two fish