You may know that it is May by the orange and lemon stands, which are erected in almost every piazza. These are little booths covered with canvas, and fantastically adorned with lemons and oranges intermixed, which, piled into pyramids and disposed about everywhere, have a very gay effect. They are generally placed near a fountain, the water of which is conducted through a _canna_ into the centre of the booth, and there, finding its own level again, makes a little spilling fountain from which the _bibite_ are diluted. Here for a _baiocco_ one buys lemonade or orangeade and all sorts of curious little drinks or _bibite_, with a feeble taste of anisette or some other herb to take off the mawkishness of the water,--or for a half-_baiocco_ one may have the lemonade without sugar, and in this way it is usually drunk. On all _festa_-days, little portable tables are carried round the streets, hung to the neck of the _limonaro_, and set down at convenient spots, or whenever a customer presents himself, and the cries of "_Acqua fresca,--limonaro, limonaro,--chi vuol bere?_" are heard on all sides; and I can assure you, that, after standing on tiptoe for an hour in the heat and straining your neck and head to get sight of some Church procession, you are glad enough to go to the extravagance of even a lemonade with sugar; and smacking your lips, you bless the institution of the _limonaro_ as one which must have been early instituted by the Good Samaritan. Listen to his own description of himself in one of the popular _canzonetti_ sung about the streets by wandering musicians to the accompaniment of a violin and guitar:-- "Ma per altro son uomo ingegnoso, Non possiedo, ma sono padrone; Vendo l' acqua con spirto e limone Finche dura d' estate il calor. "Ho an capello di paglia,--ma bello! Un zinale di sopra fino; Chi mi osserva nel mio tavolino, Gli vien sete, se sete non ha. "Spaccio spirti, siroppi, acquavite Fo 'ranciate di nuova invenzione; Voi vedete quante persone Chiedon acqua,--e rispondo,--Son quà!" The _limonaro_ is the exponent, the algebraic power, of the Church processions which abound this month; and he is as faithful to them as Boswell to Johnson;--wherever they appear, he is there to console and refresh. Nor is his office a sinecure now; and let us hope that he has his small profits, as well as the Church,--though they spell theirs differently.