What is worse, here was no rest to be
had, for the multitudes of vermin up stairs and below. When we first
hired the house, I remember my maid jumping up on one of the kitchen
chairs while a ragged lad cleared _that_ apartment for her of scorpions
to the number of seventeen. But now the biters and stingers drive me
_quite wild_, because one must keep the windows open for air, and a sick
man can enjoy none of that, being closed up in the Zanzariere, and
obliged to respire the same breath over and over again; which, with a
sore throat and fever, is most melancholy: but I keep it wet with
vinegar, and defy the hornets how I can.
What is more surprising than all, however, is to hear that no lemons can
be procured for less than two pence English a-piece; and now I am almost
ready to join myself in the general cry against Italian imposition, and
recollect the proverb which teaches us
Chi ha da far con Tosco,
Non bisogna esser losco[AB];
[Footnote AB:
Who has to do with Tuscan wight,
Of both his eyes will need the light.
]
as I am confident they cannot be worth even two pence a hundred here,
where they hang like apples in our cyder countries; but the rogues know
that my husband is sick, and upon poor me they have no mercy.
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