pavements, which every shop-owner, every worker, maintains with cleanliness, constantly sweeping and pushing everything down the middle, which gets filthier and filthier, and with every breeze sends back the rubbish first thrown into the street. In Naples you see donkeys every day busy carrying rubbish to the gardens and fields. Couldn’t you implant such a service or something similar?

Here things are as they are,’ replied the merchant. Everything we throw out of the house rots piled up in front of the door. You see here layers of straw and reeds, kitchen waste and all sorts of rubbish; all this together dries up and returns to us in dust against which we defend ourselves all day long. But look: our brooms, so pretty, clean, agile, end up wearing out and only increase the filth in front of the houses.-

…To my repeated question as to whether some measure could not be taken, he replied that it was said among the people that those who should watch over the cleanliness could not, being influential and important people, be forced to make the use of public money as they should. And he also added a special circumstance: removing that layer of rubbish would show how the pavement is in a bad state and this would reveal the dishonesty of another administration.

_But these are malevolent suppositions_

As for him, he was of the opinion of those who say that the nobles kept this soft layer for their carriages, so that they could comfortably take their evening stroll on elastic ground. And because the good man was in a good-humoured mood, he also ridiculed other abuses of administration and gave me consoling proof that man always retains sufficient gaiety to revel in the inevitable evils.