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chinka, chinka," " stivola," "pollastro," seemed continu- ally in oral evidence, the " chinka, chinka," of an old lady (like the grandmother of one ofOuida's peasant hero- ines, of a strange and an antique mould) rising calmly above the rest. She sold four and five pieces of fish for a penny. Her competitors dealt in boots and shoes, chickens, cheese, crockery, flowers what indeed, did they not sell?
And this fine old market of white umbrellas, with the sun playing all kinds of fantastic tricks with its various wares, was the Forum in olden days. The building we spoke of as a Temple we find was the Tribune, " to which the newly-elected-Capitano del Popolo of the Free City, after having heard Mass at the Cathedral, was conducted, and in which, after he had addressed the people, he was invested with the insignia of office." In after times the sentences of condemned criminals were pronounced from this Tribune. Proclamations were made from it, and debt- ors were here compelled to submit to a humiliating punish- ment. In all bright scenes, however sunny, the shadow always comes.
As they left the market, they met the prison van on its way to the local Newgate ; but even this conveyance had a gay appearance. The officers in charge, in new cocked hats and bright swords, were chatting with the driver, a peasant, who was calmly smoking a cigarette. Beggary does not excite your sympathy as it does in London. The Italian mendicant is dirty, perhaps ; unaffectedly lazy, but he looks warm in his rags. There is a terrible reality about most of the London beggars ; and the professionals, whom Mr. Ribton-Turner, in his book on Vagrancy, has immortalized, can " assume a wretchedness " so keenly that they compel your pity. Nevertheless no Verona beg- gar made an unavailing appeal to Sam Swynford during this happy time at Verona ; and, full of his romantic success
