Just as I had decided in favour of the last-named, he gave a more than
usually vigorous jerk, sat up in bed and, opening his eyes, remarked:

"Those fleas!"

This, then, was the malady. I enquired why he had not joined his
companions.

He was tired, he said; tired of life in general, and of flute-playing in
particular. Tired, moreover, of certain animals; and with a tiger-like
spring he leapt out of bed.

Once thoroughly awake, he proved an amiable talker, though oppressed
with an incurable melancholy which no amount of tobacco and Venosa wine
could dispel. In gravely boyish fashion he told me of his life and
ambitions. He had passed a high standard at school, but--what would
you?--every post was crowded. He liked music, and would gladly take it
up as a profession, if anything could be learnt with a band such as his;
he was sick, utterly sick, of everything. Above all things, he wished to
travel. Visions of America floated before his mind--where was the money
to come from? Besides, there was the military service looming close at
hand; and then, a widowed mother at home--the inevitable mother--with a
couple of little sisters; how shall a man desert his family? He was born
on a farm on the Murge, the watershed between this country and the
Adriatic. Thinking of the Murge, that shapeless and dismal range of
limestone hills whose name suggests its sad monotony, I began to
understand the origin of his pagan wistfulness.

"Happy foreigners!"--such was his constant refrain--"happy foreigners,
who can always do exactly what they like! Tell me something about other