Asparagus also has long since come; and artichokes
make their daily appearance on the table, sliced up and fried, or
boiled whole, or coming up roasted and gleaming with butter, with more
outside capes and coats than an ideal English coachman of the olden
times. _Finocchi_, too, are here, tasting like anisette, and good to
mix in the salads. And great beans lie about in piles, the _contadini_
twisting them out of their thick pods with their thumbs, to eat them
raw. Nay, even the _signoria_ of the noble families do the same, as
they walk through the gardens, and think them such a luxury that they
eat them raw for breakfast. But over and above all other vegetables are
the lettuces, which are one of the great staples of food for the Roman
people, and so crisp, fresh, delicate, and high-flavored, that be who
eats them once will hold Nebuchadnezzar no longer a subject for
compassion, but rather of envy. Drowned in fresh olive-oil and strong
with vinegar, they are a feast for the gods; and even in their natural
state, without condiments, they are by no means to be despised. At the
corners of the streets they lie piled in green heaps, and are sold at a
_baiocco_ for five heads. At noontide, the _contadini_ and laborers
feed upon them without even the condiment of salt, crunching their
white teeth through the crisp, wet leaves, and alternating a bite at a
great wedge of bread; and toward nightfall, one may see carts laden
high up with closely packed masses of them, coming in from the Campagna
for the market.
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