Was it, he asked, at all like a chemist's shop in London?
My reply certainly gratified him, but I am afraid it did not increase his desire to visit England.
Whilst I was at the chemist's, there entered a number of peasants, whose appearance was so striking that I sought information about them.
Don Pasquale called them "_Greci_"; they came from a mountain village where the dialect of the people is still a corrupt Greek.

One would like to imagine that their origin dates back to the early Hellenic days, but it is assuredly much later.

These villages may be a relic of the Byzantine conquest in the sixth century, when Southern Italy was, to a great extent, re peopled from the Eastern Empire, though another theory suggests that they were formed by immigrants from Greece at the time of the Turkish invasion.

Each of the women had a baby hanging at her back, together with miscellaneous goods which she had purchased in the town: though so heavily burdened, they walked erect, and with the free step of mountaineers.
I could not have had a better opportunity than was afforded me on this day of observing the peasantry of the Catanzaro district.

It was the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and from all around the country-folk thronged in pilgrimage to the church of the Immaculate; since earliest morning I had heard the note of bagpipes, which continued to sound before the street shrines all day long.