Still, there is one place in Melbourne where people seem to revert back to their original state: where the Frenchman, the German, the Greek, the Italian, and Russian throw off the garment of Australianism, and eat, look, and speak like men of their own country, glorying in it, too. It is as though a little patch had been cut clean out of Soho, and _planté là_ in the midst of this prosaic city. The great and good of Melbourne do not know of its existence, by which I mean the great-and-good in family masses, all hyphened together; but still, there is potential greatness to be met with there, and active goodness, and light-heartedness, and charm—that undefinable, subtle quality in which a balance at the bank mercifully plays no part. And yet it is only a little Italian café—what, in my ultra-English days, I might have called “a common little café.” When first I knew it, it was situated in a low, straggling building in a rather undesirable street. There were two private rooms in front where the family lived. I know that because I once penetrated into one of them to see a sick baby. Between these was a narrow passage leading to a large room, with one long table running down the centre, the kitchen, at the door of which one usually lingered to have a few words with the hostess, and a smaller dingy room lying to the side. At the end of the long room was a window, and a door opening into a courtyard, patched with yellow light and velvety black shadows; and shaded for the most part with a trellis of vines, most delicately and deliciously green in the spring and early summer, and great dark casks, which had come filled with red wine straight from Italy, the very blood of the country, and about which the old host was for ever busied with a funnel and many bottles, for white or red wine was supplied free of extra charge to all the customers. After a word with the two daughters, busy over the long table at which never more than thirty were served each evening, one moved out, if one were early, as I always took care to be, to a bench in the court yard, pleasantly cool even on the hottest evening to sip one’s vermouth in the open air, and chatter to the old host, who would answer back in slow difficult English—only answering, volunteering no remark. Not that it mattered, for the peace, the sense of having slipped all the burdens of the day off one’s shoulders on to that single meagre door step, made one discursive; besides, a little later on there would be so many people talking, so much to listen to, that one’s chance would be gone.