“Wine!” echoed Ithuel; “tell the Signore that we shouldn’t call this stuff wine at all.  Nothing goes down our throats that doesn’t rasp like a file, and burn like a chip of Vesuvius.  I wish, now, we had a drink of New England rum here, in order to show him the difference.  I despise the man who thinks all his own things the best, just because they’re his’n; but taste is taste, a’ter all, and there’s no denying it.”

“Perhaps the Signor Americano can give us an insight into the religion of his country—­or are the Americani pagans?  I do not remember, Vito, to have read anything of the religion of that quarter of the world.”

“Religion too!—­well, a question like this, now, would make a stir among our folks in New Hampshire!  Look here, Signore; we don’t call your ceremonies, and images, and robes, and ringing of bells, and bowing and scraping, a religion at all; any more than we should call this smooth liquor, wine.”

Ithuel was more under the influence of this “smooth liquor” than he was aware of, or he would not have been so loud in the expression of his dissent; as experience had taught him the necessity of reserve on such subjects, in most Catholic communities.  But of all this the Signor Barrofaldi was ignorant, and he made his answer with the severity of a good Catholic, though it was with the temper of a gentleman.

“What the Americano calls our ceremonies, and images, and ringing of bells, are probably not understood by him,” he said; “since a country as little civilized as his own cannot very well comprehend the mysteries of a profound and ancient religion.”

“Civilized!  I calculate that it would stump this part of the world to produce such a civilization as our very youngest children are brought up on.  But it’s of no use talking, and so we will drink.”

Andrea perceiving, indeed, that there was not much use in talking, more especially as Filippo had been a good deal mystified by the word “stump,” was now disposed to abandon the idea of a dissertation on “religion, manners, and laws,” to come at once to the matter that brought him into the present company.

“This Americano is also a servant of the English king, it would seem,” he carelessly remarked; “I remember to have heard that there was a war between his country and that of the Inglesi, in which the French assisted the Americani to obtain a sort of national independence.  What that independence is, I do not know; but it is probable that the people of the New World are still obliged to find mariners to serve in the navy of their former masters.”

Ithuel’s muscles twitched, and an expression of intense bitterness darkened his countenance.  Then he smiled in a sort of derision, and gave vent to his feelings in words.