"I hope you are not hungry, Kalmon, for you will not get anything very elaborate to eat!" "Bread and cheese will do, my dear fellow." When Italians go to the country they take nothing of the city with them.
They like the contrast to be complete; they love the total absence of restraint; they think it delightful to dine in their shooting-coats and to eat coarse fare.

If they had to dress for dinner it would not be the country at all, nor if dinner had to begin with soup and end with sweets just as it does in town.

They eat extraordinary messes that would make a Frenchman turn pale and a German look grave.

They make portentous pasties, rich with everything under the sun; they eat fat boiled beef, and raw fennel, and green almonds, and vast quantities of cream cheese, and they drink sour wine like water; and it all agrees with them perfectly, so that they come back to the city refreshed and rested after a gastronomic treatment which would bring any other European to death's door.
The table was set out on the verandah that evening, as usual in spring, and little by little the Professor absorbed the conversation, for they all asked him questions, few of which could be answered shortly.

He was one of those profoundly cultivated Italians who are often to be met nowadays, but whose gifts it is not easy to appreciate except in a certain degree of intimacy.