discorre piu con gente_."

I returned half an hour later, and she was laughing and playing sweetly
with her babe.

It suits the passionate nature of the Italians to have incredible ado
about buying and selling, and a day's shopping is a sort of campaign, from
which the shopper returns plundered and discomfited, or laden with the
spoil of vanquished shopmen.

The embattled commercial transaction is conducted in this wise:

The shopper enters, and prices a given article. The shopman names a sum of
which only the fervid imagination of the South could conceive as
corresponding to the value of the goods.

The purchaser instantly starts back with a wail of horror and indignation,
and the shopman throws himself forward over the counter with a protest
that, far from being dear, the article is ruinously cheap at the price
stated, though they may nevertheless agree for something less.

What, then, is the very most ultimate price?

Properly, the very most ultimate price is so much. (Say, the smallest
trifle under the price first asked.)

The purchaser moves toward the door. He comes back, and offers one third
of the very most ultimate price.

The shopman, with a gentle desperation, declares that the thing cost him