DEUS EX MACHINA The winter of 1890 was one of the most bitter to attack Europe during the closing years of the century, and in Holland, where I spent almost the entire season, and where the weather is normally temperate, one is completely unprepared for such low temperatures, and everyone was dying of cold. And there were those who did indeed die: in the streets of the more populated cities corpses were frequently found, rigid and frozen. The normally phlegmatic Dutch complained in the newspapers about the celestial inclemency, in the same way as, years later, the exuberant Neapolitans did – everyone behaves the same in the face of a disaster – when they saw Vesuvius trimmed with ice and the Riviera di Chiaia covered in snow, protesting vociferously in the gazettes against a Providence which ordained or allowed those extremes of temperature in a region which was normally so little affected in such a way – as though it were all the fault of the government. In the Netherlands, the temperature remained between twenty-five and thirty degrees below freezing for the whole of December; the canals were frozen over, as were the rivers, and even the Zuider Zee, the little Mediterranean of that country. But the Dutch, who are better prepared than the Neapolitans for facing such inclemency, put the situation to good use and so determined to take advantage of the conditions. Wrapped in furs, opulent or moth-eaten, according to the wealth of their owners, they went out to skate, and since they are such masters of this sport, they unconsciously transformed their usually dour, sullen and grotesque selves, becoming instead communicative, open and happy, giving the country an extraordinary vivacity never witnessed during normal winters.