By the way, Count--you remember our
conversation? Wel, I have thought of an insuperable objection to your
Mediterranean theory. The sirocco. You will never change the sirocco.
The Elect of the Earth will never endure it all their lives."
"I think we can change the sirocco," replied the Count, meditatively.
"We can tame it, at all events. I do not know much about its history;
you must ask Mr. Eames--"
"Who is at home," interrupted Keith, "closeted with his Perrelli."
"What has been, may be," continued the old man, oracularly. "I question
whether the sirocco was as obnoxious in olden days as now, otherwise
the ancients, who had absurdly sensitive skins, would have complained
of it more frequently. The deforestation of Northern Africa, I suspect,
has much to do with it. Frenchmen are now trying to revive those
prosperous conditions which Mohammedanism has destroyed. Oh, yes! I
don't despair of muzzling the sirocco, even as we are muzzling that
often Mediterranean pest, the malaria."
Keith observed:
"Petronius, I remember, speaks of the North wind being the mistress of
the Tyrrhenian.
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