Fruits abounded, and were very cheap; if one purchased from a stall
the difficulty was to carry away the abundance offered for one's
smallest coin. Excellent oranges cost about a penny the half-dozen.
Any one who is fond of the prickly fig should go to Catanzaro. I
asked a man sitting with a basket of them at a street corner to give
me the worth of a soldo (a half-penny); he began to fill my pocket,
and when I cried that it was enough, that I could carry no more, he
held up one particularly fine fruit, smiled as only an Italian can,
and said, with admirable politeness, "_Questo per complimento_!" I
ought to have shaken hands with him.
Even when I had grown accustomed to the place, its singular
appearance of incompleteness kept exciting my attention. I had never
seen a town so ragged at the edges. If there had recently been a
great conflagration and almost all the whole city were being
rebuilt, it would have looked much as it did at the time of my
visit. To enter the post-office one had to clamber over heaps of
stone and plaster, to stride over tumbled beams and jump across
great puddles, entering at last by shaky stairs a place which looked
like the waiting-room of an unfinished railway station.
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