“Well,” I said, “what do you think now about the war?  Did you see that the Canadians took a mile of trenches five hundred yards deep last week?  Do you still think Germany will win?” To my surprise he turned on his heel and began apparently rummaging along a row of glass jars.  His gaze seemed to be fastened upon a tall bottle containing ethyl alcohol.  At last he turned round.  His broad, naive face was quivering like blanc-mange.

“What do I care who wins?” he said.  “What does it matter to me any more?  Minna is dead.  She died two weeks ago of pneumonia.”

As I stood, not knowing what to say, there was a patter along the floor.  The little dachshund came scampering into the shop and frisked about my feet.

THE HAUNTING BEAUTY OF STRYCHNINE

A LITTLE-KNOWN TOWN OF UNEARTHLY BEAUTY

Slowly, reluctantly (rather like a vers libre poem) the quaint little train comes to a stand.  Along the station platform each of the fiacre drivers seizes a large dinner-bell and tries to outring the others.  You step from the railway carriage—­and instantly the hellish din of those droschky bells faints into a dim, far-away tolling.  Your eye has caught the superb sweep of the Casa Grande beetling on its crag.  Over the sapphire canal where the old men are fishing for sprats, above the rugged scarp where the blue-bloused ouvriers are quarrying the famous champagne cheese, you see the Gothic transept of the Palazzio Ginricci, dour against a nacre sky.  An involuntary tremolo eddies down your spinal marrow.  The Gin Palace, you murmur....  At last you are in Strychnine.

Unnoted by Baedeker, unsung by poets, unrhapsodied by press agents—­there lurks the little town of Strychnine in that far and untravelled corner where France, Russia, and Liberia meet in an unedifying Zollverein.  The strychnine baths have long been famous among physicians, but the usual ruddy tourist knows them not.  The sorrowful ennui of a ten-hour journey on the B.V.D. Chemise de fer (with innumerable examinations of luggage), while it has kept out the contraband Swiss cheese which is so strictly interdicted, has also kept away the rich and garrulous tourist.  But he who will endure to the end that tortuous journey among flat fields of rye and parsimony, will find himself well rewarded.  The long tunnel through Mondragone ends at length, and you find yourself on the platform with the droschky bells clanging in your ears and the ineffable majesty of the Casa Grande crag soaring behind the jade canal.

The air was chill, and I buttoned my surtout tightly as I stepped into the curious seven-wheeled sforza lettered Hotel Decameron.  We rumbled andante espressivo over the hexagonal cobbles of the Chaussee d’Arsenic, crossed the mauve canal and bent under the hanging cliffs of the cheese quarries.  I could see the fishwives carrying great trays of lampreys and lambrequins toward the fish market.  It is curious what quaintly assorted impressions one receives in the first few minutes in a strange place.  I remember noticing a sausage kiosk in the markt-platz where a man in a white coat was busily selling hot icons.  They are delivered fresh every hour from the Casa Grande (the great cheese cathedral) on the cliff.