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Part of the message, written on two, scrunched-up translucent sheets of paper, read: “Bismark Omit leafage buck bank / Paul Ramify loamy event false new event.”

It wouldn't fix the world's troubles if places started using a little less leafage on sandwiches, but every little bit helps.

Smugly, I carry them home, sauté the leafage with garlic and chili and lemon zest, feeling rampantly Italian . . . until I remember the dozens of white bitter roots rolling around in the bottom of my fridge.

What can be worse than festoons of leafage, like so many sausages, painted upon a ceiling, with griffins, small framed pictures, impossible flowers, and feeble ornament, all with fictitious light and shade?

You imagine the rich lights and shadows, the jewel-bright leafage, the faces and moving limbs of men and women, seen for an instant and gone again.