The bridegroom has left his mother to do the honors to the bride, and himself attends to the rest of the company, inviting one of them to drink some wine by a sign, enlarged in Fig. 88, which is not merely pointing to the mouth with the thumb, but the hand with the incurved fingers represents the body of the common glass flask which the Neapolitans use, the extended thumb being its neck; the invitation is therefore specially to drink wine.  The guest, however, responds by a very obvious gesture that he don’t wish anything to drink, but he would like to eat some macaroni, the fingers being disposed as if handling that comestible in the fashion of vulgar Italians.  If the idea were only to eat generally, it would have been expressed by the fingers and thumb united in a point and moved several times near and toward the mouth, not raised above it, as is necessary for suspending the strings of macaroni.

[Illustration:  Fig. 89.—­Quarrel between Neapolitan women.]

In Fig. 89 the female in the left of the group is much disgusted at seeing one of her former acquaintances, who has met with good fortune, promenade in a fine costume with her husband.  Overcome with jealousy, she spreads out her dress derisively on both sides, in imitation of the hoop-skirts once worn by women of rank, as if to say “So you are playing the great lady!” The insulted woman, in resentment, makes with both hands, for double effect, the sign of horns, before described, which in this case is done obviously in menace and imprecation.  The husband is a pacific fellow who is not willing to get into a woman’s quarrel, and is very easily held back by a woman and small boy who happen to join the group.  He contents himself with pretending to be in a great passion and biting his finger, which gesture may be collated with the emotional clinching of the teeth and biting the lips in anger, common to all mankind.

[Illustration:  Fig. 90.—­The cheating Neapolitan chestnut huckster.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 91.]

In Fig. 90 a contadina, or woman from the country, who has come to the city to sell eggs (shown to be such by her head-dress, and the form of the basket which she has deposited on the ground), accosts a vender of roast chestnuts and asks for a measure of them.  The chestnut huckster says they are very fine and asks a price beyond that of the market; but a boy sees that the rustic woman is not sharp in worldly matters and desires to warn her against the cheat.  He therefore, at the moment when he can catch her eye, pretending to lean upon his basket, and moving thus a little behind the huckster, so as not to be seen, points him out with his index finger, and lays his left forefinger under his eye, pulling down the skin slightly, so as to deform the regularity of the lower eyelid.  This is a warning against a cheat, shown more clearly in Fig. 91.  This sign primarily indicates a squinting person, and metaphorically one whose looks cannot be trusted, even as in a squinting person you cannot be certain in which direction he is looking.