Between _colazione_ at midday and _pranzo_ at eight, or even half-past, what an abysm of time! Of course, the Tarantine never reads; the only bookshop I could discover made a poorer display than even that at Cosenza--it was not truly a bookseller's at all, but a fancy stationer's.

How the women spend their lives one may vainly conjecture.

Only on Sunday did I see a few of them about the street; they walked to and from Mass, with eyes on the ground, and all the better-dressed of them wore black.
When the weather fell calm again, and there was pleasure in walking, I chanced upon a trace of the old civilization which interested me more than objects ranged in a museum.

Rambling eastward along the outer shore, in the wilderness which begins as soon as the town has disappeared, I came to a spot as uninviting as could be imagined, great mounds of dry rubbish, evidently deposited here by the dust-carts of Taranto; luckily, I continued my walk beyond this obstacle, and after a while became aware that I had entered upon a road--a short piece of well-marked road, which began and ended in the mere waste.

A moment's examination, and I saw that it was no modern by-way.