The Foamy Cicadella 



glass which accounts for the evenness of the 

 frothy bubbles. 



Ulysses, the favourite of the gods, re- 

 ceived from the storm-dispenser, uiEolus, 

 bags in which the winds were confined. The 

 carelessness of his crew, who untied the bags 

 to find out what they contained, let loose a 

 tempest which destroyed the fleet. I have 

 seen those mythological wind-filled bags; I 

 saw them years ago, when I was a child. 



A peripatetic tinker, a son of Calabria, 

 had set up between two stones the crucible 

 in which a tin soup-tureen and plates were 

 to be remelted. ^Eolus did the blowing, 

 ^Eolus in the person of a little dark- 

 skinned boy who, squatting on his heels, 

 forced air towards the forge by alter- 

 nately squeezing two goatskin bags, one on 

 the right and one on the left. Thus must 

 the prehistoric bronze-smelters have per- 

 formed their task, they whose workshops and 

 whose remains of copper-slag I find on the 

 hills near my home: the blast of their fur- 

 naces was produced by these inflated skins. 



The machine employed by my ^Eolus is 



pathetically simple. The hide of a goat, 



with the hair left on, is practically all that 



is necessary. It is a bag fastened at the 



433 



