Chapter III: Part 3

From Viterbo we drove to the estate of the Duke of Lante, one of the most famous Italian villas. The present duke has an American mother and wife. We had a letter of introduction from a mutual friend. All the grown-up people of the family were absent. We were received by two tiny fairies in pink calico, who took us each by a hand and led us through the garden to see the oaks, the famous bronze fountain, and the interesting house. I never have had so lovely an escort or a kinder welcome than the little ladies of the Villa Lante gave us.

February 26, 1898.

You will like to hear about a day of pure delight. I left home, duty, and family, and went off with Donna Primavera for an outing at Ostia. We started at ten in the morning, returned at six at night. I had been there before on my bicycle--it is a capital road--but on that occasion I saw nothing except the view. Ostia is an ancient Roman commercial town founded by Ancus Martius, the fourth of the Roman kings; that takes it back to the sixth century B.C. The ruins of Ostia are on the banks of the Tiber. From here the fleets of merchant galleys sailed away to Greece and Africa. I felt that I was penetrating into the business life of the Romans as never before. Of course, I knew vaguely that there was a great commerce underlying the whole vast scheme, supporting the army and the art, but I was not prepared for the illumination I received in wandering through the old warehouses, where we found rows of vast amphoræ (earthenware jars) which had contained wine, oil, and grain. Trade was as important in the time of Augustus as in the days of McKinley. The fleets that sailed into the harbor of Ostia brought nothing more precious than the marbles from Paros and Africa. It is said of Augustus that he found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble. The threshold of the temple at Ostia is a single slab of _africano_ sixteen feet long, delicious in color--rose, gray, and black blended in the most adorable mottlings. Signor Lanciani tells me they have lately discovered a large cargo of precious marbles at or near Ostia which has been lying waiting perhaps two thousand years for the hand of the builder. I should like to have a piece of it. In Rome one learns to appreciate marbles. I point out the different varieties to all the friends from home whom I pilot about the city (there are plenty of them), and it is a rare thing to find one who knows the difference between _cipollino_ and _serpentino_. Tell that to the Kindergartnerins!

April 16, 1898.

Waked up at dawn this morning by the rattling of cabs and carriages and the footsteps of sixty thousand people going to St. Peter’s to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of the Pope’s coronation. I had not meant to go,--these functions are such an old story to me,--but I could not resist the magnetism of the crowd. The Borgo and the Piazza were black with people. Before the obelisk a double cordon of troops stretched across the whole Piazza--government troops, you understand; the government keeps order when the Pope goes to St. Peter’s and is responsible for his safety. The Borgo is perhaps the safest place to live in that exists; I have never heard of any other so carefully guarded. Inside the Vatican the Papal troops keep order. At a certain point behind the church two sentinels pace their beat, the spot where they meet marking the line of the exterritorial limits of the Vatican. One sentinel wears the King’s uniform, the other wears the Pope’s; they appear to be on friendly terms.

My ticket admitted me to the bronze door. The crush going up the steps was terrific; once inside the church, all was well. I never have known a panic or a stampede in all the many crowds I have seen gather in the great church across the way. In the days of the Cæsars the Romans learned how to behave at a great pageant; they have never forgotten the lesson. The Roman crowd is the best behaved and most good-natured in the world. Of course, there are always people who feel the effects of being in such a crush; I saw three women faint and one man “tumble in a fit” to-day. They were immediately carried to one of the hospitals fitted up in various parts of the building on all such occasions. It happened once that a child was born in St. Peter’s while a great function was going on--I think it was a beatification.

An aisle was kept open, by means of movable benches, leading from the Chapel of the Sacrament, which communicates with the Vatican, to the papal throne, placed to-day for the first time since 1870 under the chair of St. Peter at the end of the basilica. The walls were hung with miles of crimson velvet and brocade. I like the church better plain, but it made a “soomptuous melée” of color. I saw the Crown Princess of Sweden and the Countess of Trani, sister of the Empress of Austria, in the tribune reserved for royal guests. The costumes of the papal court are simply enchanting. The red and yellow uniform of the Swiss Guard never palls; it was designed by Michael Angelo, who had some taste. The chamberlains, some of whom we know, looked so handsome in black velvet doublets and knee breeches, with stiff white ruffs and thick gold chains of office that it was hard to recognize them. The ambassadors wore their best togs, the noble ladies (they are obliged to go in black) all their jewels. The plebs in their way were quite as decorative as the patricians,--peasants with goatskin trousers and _cioce_, monks and nuns of every order, flocks of students from the theological seminaries in the dress Dante wore. The German students in vermilion habits--the scarlet tanagers of the Roman landscape--are the finest. The Pope was due at ten; at a quarter before eleven the cardinals began to arrive. Their dress is admirable; it never looks so well as when they are marching down the aisle at St. Peter’s. At eleven the Pope appeared in the gestatorial chair carried by eight lackeys in crimson brocade: Michael Angelo, they say, designed this livery too. The tall white feather fans carried in the procession reminded me of a bas-relief on the walls of the ruins at Karnak in Egypt representing the Pharaoh going in triumph to the temple. Pharaoh’s chair was not unlike the _sedia gestatoria_, the feather fans seem identical, the triple crown of the Pope is very like the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt worn by Rameses. In the midst of all this swirl of color imagine Leo’s alabaster face with the eyes of brown fire. When he rose feebly to give the benediction his hands looked transparent. There was even more shouting “_Viva il papa ré!_” than usual. The Pope is as exquisitely _soigné_ as a young belle; his valet, Pio Centra,--one of whose duties is to taste everything his master eats or drinks,--certainly knows his business. Centra is a great personage and is kowtowed to by the people about the Vatican.

The Pope safely on his throne, I did not care to wait for the service and watched my chance of getting out. I edged my way to the vicinity of one of the exits and waited. I soon saw a gigantic German student--he must have been six feet six inches tall--who was evidently of the same mind about going. I managed to slip in behind him and follow in his wake. When we were close to the door the press was so great that I really was frightened; in another moment I should have been separated from my giant. In desperation I seized the streamers of red broadcloth that hung from his shoulders. He looked behind him, saw a woman, fancied the de’il was after him, and fled for his life, cleaving the solid wall of people with his mighty elbows. The faster he ran the tighter I held on, till at last he brought us both through that awful pressure--I thought it would break my ribs--down the steps and out into the piazza, where I let him go. I am not sure which of us was the most frightened!

One of the _Guardia Nobile_ (the Pope’s Noble Guard) told me that in the year 1889 he was on duty in the Pope’s antechamber the night after the dedication of the statue of Giordano Bruno--a renegade Dominican or a great reformer, according to your politics--on the very spot where in 1600 Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy. The Pope was much offended, he felt that the Church had been insulted; there was even talk of removing the seat of the papacy from Rome. That plan, if it ever was seriously considered, was soon given up. The whole matter had agitated the Pope tremendously, and the people about him felt anxious about his health. When the usual hour passed for his light to be put out they grew more and more nervous. Eleven, twelve, one o’clock, still that thin line of light under the door. Finally they knocked. No answer. They gently opened the door and saw the old man kneeling weeping at his _priedieu_. Our friend, a man of the world, had been deeply moved by that glimpse through the open door. As for me, “’t is as if I’d seen it all.”

Like Pius the Ninth, Leo began by trying for a liberal policy. The power behind the throne--the faction of _intransigentes_--was too strong for him. When he was elected Pope he wished to give his benediction to the vast throng of people in the Piazza from the window over the door of St. Peter’s, as his predecessors had done. This was opposed, but a rumor spread through the city that the new Pope stood firmly to his intention. The Piazza was crammed with waiting people; at the Quirinal the royal carriage stood ready to bring the Queen to the Piazza to receive the blessing. After a long delay those who watched with glasses saw a small white figure hurrying down the passage which leads to the window. The Pope was coming! Suddenly the white figure hesitated, paused, turned back, retreated. The way had been barricaded with benches!

Sovereign Pontiff, indeed! This was forcible coercion!

When you stop to think about it, nobody is quite free. The freest man I know is Scipione, the travelling knife-grinder. He carries his tools on his back, the open street is his shop, the people he meets his customers. As I sat at work this morning I heard the welcome sound of his cracked bell. My knife being duller than even I can endure, I hailed him from the window. He came slowly up the long stair to the landing outside the old green door, and bade me a civil good morning.

“We have not seen you for a long time, I was afraid I should have to buy a new knife,” I said.

Scipione let a few drops of water trickle from the tap of the small can fixed above his wheel, ran his finger along the edge of my penknife, held the blade to the emery wheel, and began to work the treadle with his foot.

“It is quite true, I have not passed this way lately. You did well, however, to wait for me. Another might have ruined this really desirable knife, whose beauty and value the first comer might not realize.” Under my admiring eyes, the sparks began to fly from the wheel--who does not work better when watched by admiring eyes?

“That is a good trade of yours, is it not, Scipione?” I said.

“_E un arte civile, Signora. Non c’è ‘boss’; quando si vuole lavorare, si lavora, quando si vuole reposare, si riposa_ (It is a civil art; there is no ‘boss’; when one feels like working, one works, when one wishes to rest, one rests).”

“You have not told me what kept you so long away.”

“My grandmother has been ill, _Poverella_, there is nobody but myself to look after her.”

Scipione is not so free as I had supposed!

“Where does the _nonna_ live?”

“At Carpineto, the _paese_ of _Il Gran Ciociaro_ over there,” he nodded towards the Vatican. “_Nonna_ remembers his Holiness when he was a lad. She was among those pilgrims from his native town to whom he gave an audience the other day. What do you think he said to her? He asked her about the big chestnut tree under whose shade he used to walk when he was studying his lessons. Do you suppose that pleased her? There is no tree in the world that receives such attention as the old chestnut tree of _Il Gran Ciociaro_ at Carpineto.”

V

IN THE ABRUZZI MOUNTAINS

ROCCARASO, September 8, 1898.

We left Rome, the heat already somewhat abating, on the 2d of September. Though we had been so anxious to get away, it took an effort of will at the last. Action of any kind was abhorrent, the _dolce far niente_ had us in thrall. We finally got off at nine o’clock one morning, and arrived here at seven the same evening, having changed cars at Solmona, the home of Ovid, where we had an hour and a half to see the sights. Solmona is a good-sized town with paved streets, interesting churches, several inns,--at any of which one might risk putting up,--and a market-place, Piazza Ovidio, where we bought a basket of pears and a flask of wine: one or the other made us very ill; it is much safer to bring along provisions for such a journey. The train next passed through a wide valley, one vast orchard, red with apples “ripe and ready to drop”; then the engine began to tug, tug, up into the mountains. The road is a strategical railway, built not to meet any demand of traffic or travel, but for the transportation of troops.

“Roccaraso is the highest railroad station in Europe,” said the proud person in uniform who took our tickets. Government owns and operates all railroads; the employés are gold-laced, red-tape government officials; this one controls telegraph, mail, express--all intercourse with the outer world. We therefore forbore to mention Brenner, the station in the Alps between the Austrian Tyrol and Italy, which I believed to be even higher.

The town of Roccaraso is above the station, a _castello_ perched aloft on a spur of one of the upper Abruzzi. Below us is a wide, flat valley, all around us are crowding blue mountains, head rising above head, like inquisitive giants peeping over one another’s shoulders. The air is like rarefied electricity; the water has been tested and guaranteed absolutely pure--you know bad water is the danger of these remote, primitive villages. Our friend, the Marchesa di V., asked the engineer who laid out the railroad (it has been open only a few months) to find her a healthy place for the summer. He recommended this

From a pencil drawing]

unknown mountain fastness. Here she retired with her _bambini_ early in June. Having made herself comfortable, she prepared to make us so: hired a pleasant apartment for us,--it belongs to the widow of the ex-mayor, lately defunct,--ordered the landlady to give it three coats of whitewash, engaged Elena, a stout wench, to scrub, do the heavy work, and fetch water from the village fountain, and bade us “come on.” We came, bringing our guardian angel Vittoria, the tall seamstress, to cook and take care of us. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, must have looked like our Vittoria--calm, gentle, with rare sweetness and remarkable beauty. We sent up from Rome oil, wine, vinegar, and groceries enough to last out our stay. The Marchesa has a loaf of bread come by mail every day from Rome for the babes; she is a woman of resource, she does the impossible, the only thing worth doing! Elena’s mother makes bread for us; it is coarse and rather hard, but it suits us well enough. This is the most primitive Italy we have yet seen. Neither butter, meat, nor Parmesan cheese (quite as important) can be had here. The wine is detestable, _vino cotto_ (cooked wine), brought up in goatskins from the valley below on muleback. We are above the grape and olive belt; our meat comes twice a week from Castel di Sangro, four miles off; our butter, every other day, from Pesco Costanzi, two miles away, via the girls express established by the Marchesa.

Our apartment (it costs fifteen dollars a month) is over the village school; it has its own separate entrance, through a grim paved court-yard, where Vittoria keeps the turkey or chicken she is fattening for us. You ring a bell; whoever is within pulls a string which lifts the latch. You go up two flights of massive stone stairs to reach the living part, where we have a decent bedroom, a fair, formal salon, dining-room, and a kitchen--such a kitchen! The ex-mayor’s family must have lived in this room, except on high days and holidays, when they perhaps sat upon the deceitful parlor chairs and sofas--which had all been pasted together for our benefit and broke down at the first trial. The kitchen is an immense, smoke-browned room, with a big fireplace at one end, where all the cooking is done. Copper pots and kettles hang from the iron crane, a spit stands on the hearth, strings of red peppers swing from the rafters. There are no bellows; to coax the blaze, Elena, the vestal, kneels and blows through a long iron tube, her breath coming out through the mouth of the snake’s head at the end. It is cold to-night; the kitchen is the only warm place; I am writing close to Elena’s rousing brushwood fire. Outside there is a howling wind, inside a leg of mutton revolves slowly on the spit. Every moment I expect to see the King of the Golden River blow down the chimney and beg for a slice of that savory roast.

ROCCARASO, September 16, 1898.

We are living in the pastoral age! Each family in Roccaraso supplies its own needs, asks little of its neighbors and of the outside world--nothing but salt, wine, and oil. Life is set to the tune of “The Poor Little Swallow.” We wake in the early morning to “_povera rondinella, O povera rondinella!_” sung by the women and girls trudging up from the valley with bundles of fagots on their heads for the winter woodpiles. They are busy preparing for the long, cold season, which falls early hereabouts. Acorns for the pigs, fodder for the cows, goats, and sheep, dried peas, beans, and corn for the humans must all be carefully stored away. For several days we have watched the women winnowing the chaff from the wheat. At sunrise yesterday half a dozen girls started, each with a heavy sack of grain on her head, to walk to the nearest grist-mill, seven miles away. At sunset they came back carrying the precious flour, which must be preserved with extreme care. Good or bad, it is their mainstay through the severe winter; if it should mildew, they would eat it all the same, with the fear of the dreadful _pellagra_ in their hearts.

The government doctor, who goes periodically about the country to visit the sick and is an intelligent man,--standing rather too much on his dignity for comfortable intercourse, but a perfect mine of information,--says that _pellagra_, endemic in some parts of Italy, comes from the poor food the people eat, chiefly from the mildewed flour. It is a skin disease, which produces a painful red eruption, and all sorts of nervous and other horrors. From the autumn when the few green vegetables they raise are consumed till they are again ripe the following summer, the people live on _polenta_, made of cornmeal, macaroni, potatoes, dried peas, and sheep’s-milk cheese. In case of illness a little meat to make broth is procured, otherwise the diet is vegetarian, except on Christmas and Easter, when several families club together to make a feast, and one peasant kills a sheep or a goat, having agreed with his neighbors which part of the animal shall be allotted to each.

We have made friends with our opposite neighbor the belle of Roccaraso, a modern Penelope. We found her at her loom as usual, in a tiny stone cottage, the floor plain, trodden earth, the walls roughly plastered inside. She is even prettier seen close at hand than through the window; she wears the Roccaraso dress--you know each village has its own special costume. This is plainer than many of them, but good and appropriate. Over her head she wears a square of linen edged with lace, folded to cover the neck and lower part of the face (older women are particular to hide the mouth), a full skirt of dark homespun, a black apron, and a bright jacket, showing a colored kerchief and a full white shirt.

“Will the gentry do me the favor of entering?” she gently invited us.

“We would not interrupt your work.”

“Enter, enter!”

“If you will go on with your weaving.”

She sat down at her loom before a web of rough linsey-woolsey and shot the shuttle threaded with red linen across the woof of black wool. We ordered a dress pattern of the same stuff as that she was weaving, and some heavy white flannel striped with corn-flower blue, delicious in color and fabric.

“The signori are North Americans, yes? They come from Pittsbourgo?” Penelope began.

“North Americans, yes, not from Pittsburg.” She was disappointed, but a visiting-card partly consoled her.

“How do you call yourself?” J. asked.

“Mariuccia, _per servirla_.”

“This yarn you weave with, Mariuccia, tell us where it came from?” She seemed astonished at the question, took a distaff from a nail, and showed us how she used it.

“_’Gnor_, I made the yarn with this rocca; so, how else?”

“And the wool, where did you get that?”

“_’Gnor_, from my own sheep.”

“Can you spin flax also, and weave linen?”

“_Altro!_ “She lifted the cover of an old marriage-chest--it smelt of lavender.

“Behold my _corredo_.” The chest held the linen she had woven for her marriage,--towels, sheets, table-cloths, and napkins, enough to last her lifetime.

“See what Andrea sent me “for _Natale_” (Christmas). She took out of the _cassone_ a pair of high-heeled, pointed-toed boots--they would have crippled her in a week--and a pair of American storm rubbers.

“The accursed ones of the Dogana forced me to pay three francs duty upon these original shoes; in confidence between us two, I cannot wear them.”

“The _cioce_ are better for you. Where did these come from?”

“My husband, he sent them to me.”

“From Pittsbourgo?”

“_’Gnor, si_, he is a cutter of stone at that place.”

“Why are you not with him?”

“’_Gnor_, the great fear of the sea. Besides, Andrea is a good husband, he sends me money every month from Pittsbourgo.”

There you have the secret of Mariuccia’s superiority: Andrea is a good husband and sends her money from Pittsburg, therefore she alone of all the women is exempt from work in the fields. She is personally neat and keeps her two rooms clean. Her cousin, a slatternly creature, living next door, and evidently the beauty’s guardian,--asked us into her house. In spite of our curiosity to see interiors we quailed at the threshold of that hovel inhabited by the village _naturale_ (simpleton), who is brother to Mariuccia’s cousin, a large turkey gobbler, and several hens.

As we took leave, Mariuccia shyly pulled my sleeve. “When the signori return to America they will take a _passeggiata_ one day to Pittsbourgo to see my Andrea, yes?” she whispered.

“_Figlia mia_, from our _paese_ it would take twelve hours’ travelling, even by the railroad, to reach Pittsbourgo.” Mariuccia smiled incredulously, she did not believe us but was too polite to say so.

J. says that when Mariuccia goes to mass she carries the American shoes on her head (I think when he met her she _must_ have been taking them to show to some friend) and wears _cioce_ on her feet. To fit the _cioce_ to the foot of the wearer, a square of cowhide, with the hair still on, is soaked in water till it becomes soft and

From a pencil drawing in the Collection of Mrs. Whitman] pliable; a hole is then made in each of the four corners of the hide; the foot is placed on the damp leather, leathern thongs are passed through the holes and wound round and round the leg and tied at the knee, so that the _ciociari_, as the wearers of the _cioce_ are called, go cross-gartered like Malvolio. When the cowhide is dry it has taken the shape of the foot, and this simplest of all footgear is ready to wear.

The flat pad worn on the head to support the water-jar is Mariuccia’s pocket. It is the obvious place to carry things. When there is no heavier burden of wood or water, her knitting or door key takes its place. I sent Elena with a packet to the Marchesa to-day--of course, she put it on her head. As it contained nothing but chiffon, the wind sent it whirling, and Elena said “_Sfortunata!_” Her little sister, Tina, three years old, balances a block of wood on her head and toddles alongside when Elena goes to draw water at the fountain; she is learning the art of burthen-bearing. Marta, who is six,--the age at which the vestals were admitted to the novitiate,--has sole charge of the household fire. When her mother and grandmother toil up from the valley with their mighty loads of fagots, Marta trots gallantly beside them under her small load of brush for kindling.

“Why does not your brother, Francesco, help to carry up wood?” we asked Marta. She shook her firm little head:

“_’Gnor, questo non èlavoro da uomo_ (That is not man’s work).” Francesco is eight; his hair is a golden fleece, his cheeks are red apples.

I notice that no man carries weights on his head; if by a rare chance he has a load to carry, he takes it on his back. We asked the doctor if the splendid port of the women came from the caryatid act. He said it was possible, but that the price was high. “So many of the poor creatures die of consumption. Only the strongest resist.” Here is the survival of the fittest with a vengeance!

We are good friends with the _sindaco_ of Roccaraso, a social soul pleased with an opportunity of enlightening the stranger. His village has a population of seventeen hundred, mostly old men, women, and children. Four hundred of the young men are in “Pittsbourgo,” most of them, like Andrea, stone-masons. Others are stable-strappers at Rome or Naples. The only able-bodied men we have seen at work are the barber and the blacksmith. The women do practically all the work of the community; they dig, plough, sow, and reap. The free, proud bearing this gives them is wonderful; their beauty surpasses belief. Michael Angelo’s sibyls spin at every street corner, Raphael’s Madonnas suckle their children at every doorway. The old women are either strong and upright, like Elena’s grandmother, or, if they go to pieces and crouch into withered crones, it is with an admirable sombre dignity. We have only once been begged from: a very old woman,--she looked like Vedder’s Cumæan sibyl,--evidently ill and suffering, and distinctly not a professional beggar, after looking furtively about to see if any one were in sight, laid hold of the hem of my dress and asked for money. She touched her hand to her lips before and after receiving it, as they do in the orient. We fancy we come across other traces of Saracen influence (they overran this part in the Dark Ages) in three-year-old Tina’s tiny frock covering her down to the feet, and the way the women hide their mouths when a stranger passes. In a town to the southward the women wear veils, which they draw half over their faces when out of doors.

ROCCARASO, September 25, 1898.

Still in this sublime place, keyed up and braced famously by the fine air. No, the name is not Roccaras_a_, though the mistake is perfectly natural. Roccaraso is an abbreviation of Rocca del Rasino, rock of the Rasino, the name of the stream running through the valley. The walled, fortified town was founded in the fifth century; it has changed very little since. Late this afternoon we stumbled up the badly paved street, passed out under the ancient gateway between the two ruined towers, down the steep, stony way to the sheepfolds at the foot of the hill. The girls were waiting to milk the flocks driven up from the valleys and down from the hills by the shepherds and their dogs. From the distance came the song of the “Little Swallow” played on a pipe by Francesco, who tends a composite flock of sheep and goats. In the early morning Francesco passes through the town calling his herd together. At the sound of his voice four brown sheep file down the steps from the house opposite, a black goat and five white sheep patter out from Mariuccia’s spare chamber--the very sheep whose wool is being spun and woven for my cream-colored flannel. This evening Francesco and his flock reached the folds before all the others. Mariuccia’s shaggy black goat made an odd grunting noise as it walked.

“Do all the goats here have such strange voices?” we asked Francesco.

“_’Gnor_, no, this animal was brought up with a litter of pigs; in this manner he learned their language.”

Elena’s grandfather, Giacomo, the chief of the shepherds, came in next, leading his blind cosset lamb and knitting as he walked: a tall, stern, gnarled old man, with white hair and keen eyes, over six feet tall, past seventy years old. His dress is handsome and substantial: dark blue homespun knee breeches, jacket and leggings, with silver buttons; a wide felt hat, and a long black cloak lined with green baize. He has two dogs, lean and fierce, with wiry white hair, pointed noses, and careworn faces. They have heavy collars studded with sharp iron spikes.

“Good-evening, Sor’ Giacomo, how goes it?”

“_’Gnor_, badly. Last night the wolves carried off the calf I was fattening for Christmas.”

“Where were the dogs?”

“They keep watch at the folds; the calf was at my cottage.” He counted the sheep as they filed through the wicket into the pen. “_Vent’ uno, venti due_; it is early for wolves, but--one understands it--yesterday I met the _padre_ of Pesco Costanzi.”

“What has that to do with your calf or the wolves?”

Sor’ Giacomo shrugged his shoulders and went on counting his sheep. We understood: the priest of Pesco Costanzi has the “_malocchio_” (evil eye).

“How many are your sheep, Sor’ Giacomo?”

“_Trenta_ (thirty), as you see.”

“It was not always so; formerly there were more?”

“_’Gnor, si._ When I was Francesco’s age my father had five thousand sheep in his care. In those days we of the Abruzzi raised wool for the whole kingdom, for the world, if you will. Now it is finished: these poor, miserable ones scarcely suffice to clothe Roccaraso.”

“Why is this thing so?”

“Why? because of an infamy. Understand, since that _castello_ was built,--who knows how long ago?--since that time at the season when the white (snow) comes, when the earth sleeps, we of the Abruzzi have always had the right to drive our sheep down to the plains of Apulia, there to graze through the winter. In a moment the thing is changed, the old right is taken away, we are forbidden to drive down our sheep. But is the winter changed? are the wolves banished? does the grass grow all the year in these mountains? I tell you it is finished.”

Giacomo is right, it is finished; he is one of the last _pastori Abruzzesi_. It is a pity; fourteen centuries of herding sheep have produced a _pur sang_ I have not often seen. The people hereabouts have that proud look of race that the Bishereen of Egypt and some of the American Indians have. “_Moglie e buoi ai paese suoi_ (wives and cattle from your own country)” is a rule rarely broken. The old shepherd-kings of the Abruzzi married only hill women, scorning the effete race of the plain, the vitiated blood of the cities. Giacomo cannot understand a people particular about the breeding of horses and dogs careless about the breeding of men. He said to his granddaughter Elena:

“What! you wish to marry that poor, sickly fellow, Paolo? Do you think more of yourself than of your family? Lucky for you your parents were not so selfish and imprudent.”

Elena has given up Paolo. She wants to go to Rome with us, to earn a little money to add to her _dote_, so that she may have pretensions to make as good a marriage as Mariuccia! The _mariage de convenances_, you see, is as much the rule among the Italian peasants as among the aristocrats.

We walked to Pesco Costanzi yesterday through the green valley, where the hobbled donkeys were grazing, and over a golden pasture infested with talkative geese. All the able-bodied women were at work in the glorious fields, threshing oats, shelling corn, drying beans. In the village, humpbacked, crippled, invalid women sat at the doors of their dark cottages making lace. The Marchesa first discovered the survival of an ancient lace industry in this hamlet. In the days of the Medici, girls from Pesco Costanzi found their way to Florence, on some sort of scholarship, and brought back the art of lace-making, and the fine renaissance patterns of that time which the women make to this day. We like it better than any peasant lace we have seen, and have ordered several patterns of it, the doctor undertaking to remit the money and deliver the goods.

On the way back to Roccaraso we passed by the tiny hamlet of Pietro Anzieri, where we saw a man ploughing a desolate patch of land with the forked branch of a tree shod with a long iron point, a primitive kind of plough I remember to have seen represented in an Etruscan wall painting. We loitered by the way, watching the lone man at work, whereat he stopped, leaned on his plough, and hailed us with the best Bowery accent.

“Say, are youse from the Yernited States?”

“Oh, yes, we are North Americans.”

“Of course; I see that. I come from New York myself. How you like Pietro Anzieri? Too slow for me; I only come to see my old mother; go back next month; got a job at Pittsbourgo.”

He was a hearty fellow, twenty-two or-three years old, a good type of the Abruzzi peasant, plus the American expression.

“How long have you lived over there?”

“Since I was a leetle boy--eleven or twelve, I dunno.”

The doctor says that most of those who go out to America under the age of twenty take root in our country and stay there. Men of thirty only remain long enough to “make their pile,” coming back to Italy to grow old and spend it.

ROCCARASO, September 28, 1898.

To Castel di Sangro this morning: a gay market-town set in a flowery meadow beside a small river widening below the bridge into a pond where the women were washing clothes. I thought I recognized a pink shirt being beaten between two stones as one of J.’s, which Elena ought to have herself washed. Her aunt lives here. Perhaps she is a washerwoman! We were puzzled by the name, Castel di Sangro,--the _castelli_ are all hill towns,--till we learned that the inhabitants several hundred years ago deserted the original Castel di Sangro, perched on a hill even harder to climb than Roccaraso’s, and moved, bag and baggage, down to the plain and founded the present town. The fibre of the race had softened since the founders built that crumbling _castello_! We climbed to the top; the view was well worth the stiff walk. The old town is now a city of the dead. Long lines of black numbered crosses mark the graves. Where they stopped a wide, deep open trench began. An old fellow, a sort of rustic sacristan, who had come up to clean the church, was the only person in sight.

“What is that trench for?” we asked him.

“_’Gnor_, who can tell which of us it may serve as a bed? In summer we prepare for winter; when the earth is frozen hard we cannot break her crust to bury the dead.” He went back to the church and began to toll the bell.

Looking down, we saw a funeral procession like that in Siegfried climbing slowly up the narrow, steep mountain path. We went down by a steep track on the other side to avoid meeting it.

We lunched at the inn; J. ordered trout (the stream is alive with them), which were served pickled! Everything else was very good. It was a market day, and the town was full of people; one dealer wished to sell us a horse, another offered a cow with a crumpled horn. Everywhere the women were busy making _conserva di pomodoro_; outside the windows of nearly every house were wooden bowls full of mashed tomatoes evaporating in the sun. This conserve is the staple condiment of Italian cooking, as necessary as butter or Parmesan cheese. The tomatoes are reduced to a stiff red paste, which keeps indefinitely and is used to make tomato sauce, to dress _risotto_, _spaghetti_, _carciofi_, served in every conceivable way. Being so concentrated it makes a much richer sauce than you can get from canned tomatoes. When we got back to Roccaraso we found that Vittoria had begun to prepare our winter supply of _conserva_--it takes days to make it. This gives the house a pervasive fragrance of “golden apples” and produces a comfortable sense of household thrift.

There is a full moon to-night: a white mist marks the line of the Rasino; it is too late in the year for nightingales: from the valley comes a faint snatch of music, played on a shepherd’s pipe, “_povera rondinella, O povera rondinella!_”

VI

SCANNO

ROCCARASO, October 1, 1898.

Last Monday morning, having decided quite suddenly to go to Scanno, we applied to the _sindaco_ for horses and a guide.

“For to-morrow, yes, I will arrange everything; for to-day it is not possible.”

“Why? The weather is fine, it is only nine o’clock. If we start at noon we shall be in time.”

“_Pazienza, Signori!_ I tell you it is not possible. The horses are at Pietro Anzieri threshing oats. The guide has gone to sell a pig at Castel di Sangro; it is market day.”

“There must be other horses. Do you mean to say there is but one man in Roccaraso who knows the road to Scanno? Even Mariuccia has been there.”

“Doubtless! many of our women went there last year on a pilgrimage. It is not easy to find a man who knows the way: it is a horrible mountain trail. I myself, Signors, born in Roccaraso, have not seen Scanno.”

“We shall start at twelve to-day, if we have to walk and take Mariuccia for a guide.”

I was sorry for the _sindaco_, a progressive man, with a dim sense at the back of his head of a future for Roccaraso if the mad _forestieri_ take a fancy to it. He pulled his long ginger whiskers and considered.

“There is Fra Diavolo, brother of him I would send with you; possibly he knows the way, but I take no responsibility.”

“Send Fra Diavolo and the horses at noon, and the responsibility shall be upon our own heads.” He shook _his_ head, pained but indulgent. The ways of the _forestieri_ are becoming known to him, and their lack of that virtue of old people and old peoples, _pazienza_!

At quarter to twelve Fra Diavolo was at our door, with a vicious mule and pack-saddle for me, a weak-kneed, blind horse with prehistoric trappings and saddle-bags for J. We soon left the dazzling white road, struck across a grassy valley, and entered a wild, stony gorge, which reminded us of the Colorado Canyon. The path is the worst I have seen outside of Palestine. We soon dismounted and let Fra Diavolo lead our beasts. He had to be very careful, lest they should break their legs. The walls of the ravine towered on either side of us; to the left the granite rocks, which form the summit, seemed to have been shaped into Gothic battlements, towers, and buttresses. I could hardly believe that nature, and not one of the Sangallo family (the famous architects), had been the designer. The trees are of primeval growth. The gorge is crossed by open plateaus and glens covered with ancient oaks and beeches. At three o’clock we halted in a fairy dell beside a spring. The water ran through a trough made from the hollowed trunk of a tree. A pink-nosed sheep was drinking--the only brave sheep I ever saw,--I had a hand-to-hand battle with him to get my share of the water. Afterwards J. and I sat down to rest and contemplated the trail, which here divided into two.

“Which is the way to Scanno?” we asked our guide.

“Who knows, Signori?” said Fra Diavolo.

“Do not you?”

“No more than yourselves.”

“Why did you say you could show us the way?”

“With the tongue one may go to Sardinia.”

“But we have been walking three hours; for the last two we have met no living creature except these sheep.”

“Where there are sheep there will be a shepherd,” said Fra Diavolo.

“_Povera rondinella, povera rondinella!_” The familiar air was played on a shepherd’s pipe.

“What did I say?” growled Fra Diavolo, a really cross person.

We came upon the shepherd a minute later. He sat with his back against an oak playing on a pipe; near him a goat with one hind leg in splint cropped the grass. They both seemed astounded at seeing us.

“The way to Scanno, _figlio mio_?”

“This is not the path. Where have the Signori come from? Roccaraso? it is not possible! You have come by a trail only fit for goats and asses. Why did you not take the mule-path? That is easy enough.”

“Well, for certain excellent reasons we did not take the mule-path, but we are going to Scanno all the same.”

“Truly? Then take the lower path--of an unimaginable badness! With good luck you may reach Scanno by _Ave Maria_.”

_Ave Maria_ is a little puzzling till you learn that it varies with the season of the year, and is always celebrated fifteen minutes after sunset.

By this time the gorge was in shadow, and though it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and we knew we should never see it again, we pushed on as fast as we could. At sunset we toiled up the high hill on which Scanno is perched. It is an old, gray, walled town; the gates stood open. At the fountain just outside the gateway a dozen women and girls were drawing water. The moment I saw them I cried out, “They look like Greeks.” I can hardly tell what gave the impression. J. says it was the head-dress; I think it was their expression. Their bearing was as free and noble as the Roccarasans’, but less friendly. They took no notice of us, showed nothing of that kindly animation and curiosity we usually find, though travellers are scarce in these parts. I only know one person who has been here--Enrico Coleman, the painter. I question if either Mr. Baedeker or Mr. Hare have seen Scanno. Edward Lear was here in 1856; his visit is the last I have found described in guide-bookery. Here, I believe, he met that old person of Abruzzi, “so blind that he could not his foot see. When they said, ‘That’s your toe,’ he replied, ‘Is that so?’ that doubtful old man of Abruzzi.”

_He_ had a certain stoicism, you see, like our silent women at the fountain. Before going to the inn we stopped at a delicious gray stone church near the gate, pushed aside the heavy leathern curtain, and looked in. The church, decorated for a _festa_, blazing with candles, was full of kneeling people; three priests in superb vestments were officiating at the altar. The air was gray with the smoke of incense; the cracked organ and harsh-voiced choristers were in full blast. Somehow, the sumptuousness of this vespers service was extraordinarily moving. Coming suddenly upon it after our pilgrimage over that lonely trail made it doubly impressive.

The inn was filthier than we should have believed possible; our rooms had not been made up since the last occupants departed. The food was incredibly bad; even the spaghetti, dressed with rancid oil, was uneatable. The poor landlady was so mortified at our not eating things, and brought in the spaghetti with such an air of triumph, that we waited until her back was turned before we threw it out of the window into a little, dark back street, where the dogs devoured it. We supped on the ends of bread and cheese from our saddle-bags, and raw eggs,--the cooked ones, like the spaghetti, tasted of rancid oil. One of the first things to learn, if you mean to travel in the byways of the world, is how to take raw eggs. If you are sure of your glass, break your egg into it, put a pinch of salt on the tongue, and swallow white and yolk whole. If the glass is doubtful, you must go back to first principles, and suck your eggs as the rats do; if they are fresh, like the Scanno eggs, there is no better way of taking them.

We were so tired with our six hours’ tramp that we went to bed at half-past nine--and got up again at ten! Sleep was impossible; the pleasures of the chase only were ours that night. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on chairs, wrapped up in the rugs without which we have learned never to travel. In the dim watches of the night J. invented a portable bed, drawing the design with a burnt match in the back of Baedeker the faithless, who only says that Scanno is the most interesting point in the Abruzzi, and makes foolish remarks about how high it is, the circumference of its lake, and such dry details. While J. was designing the portable bed, I planned a foot-note to Baedeker, about Scanno.

We made out better at breakfast than at supper. Remembering the saying, “An egg, an apple, and a nut, you may take from any slut,” we ordered boiled eggs, potatoes roasted in the ashes, and some raw apples. Afterwards we walked about the town and visited the market-place, where we had a good chance to see the strange costume of the women. The head-dress is a curious black turban covering the whole head; the hair showing behind the ears and below the turban is tightly braided with bright-colored wool--red, green, yellow. I fancy each color has its significance; perhaps one is for maids, one for matrons, one for widows. The short skirt of heavy green cloth plaited at the waist is very full, the bodice of dark blue cloth has large leg-of-mutton sleeves and fastens with pretty silver buttons. The high linen chemise showing at the neck is edged with handsome lace (_real_, of course, they quite properly scorn the machine-made variety). Nobody offered to make friends with us; the women held themselves proudly aloof: this was fine, but not encouraging. The whole place is grave, gray, dignified; there are some important-looking houses, one belonging to a rich merchant has an air of solid well-being and thrift. Next time we shall take the advice of the _sindaco_ and have _pazienza_! If we had given him twenty-four hours’ notice, he would have sent word to the Mayor of Scanno that we were coming, and we should not have found things as we did at the inn. We also should have had “to pay through the nose,” so perhaps it was just as well to see Scanno for once _au naturel_.

We walked to the lake of Scanno, a mile from the town, an irregular sheet of water with misty reflections of the bare gray mountains towering above it and the tender willows on its banks. In the little chapel of “L’Annunziata,” on the edge of the lake, we found hundreds of votive offerings, silver hearts on one side of the shrine, on the other discarded crutches and trusses, hung up by grateful sufferers miraculously cured of their ailments. These reminded us of the temple of Juno at Veii. You know the great Etruscan town near Rome, where we saw and bought those lovely Etruscan terra-cotta heads, votive offerings which the priests of Juno buried in a trench behind the temple when the walls were too full to hold more. I wonder what the priests of Scanno do with the overplus of crutches?

Outside the chapel we found raspberries, just like our red raspberries, only black; they are delicious. The lake and the raspberries refreshed us somewhat. The spell of the place--far from the beaten track of travel, where we were neither wanted nor expected--was very strong, but we were so worn that we shrank from the terrors of another night at the inn, and our boots were so knocked up by yesterday’s climb that we could not face the hardships of the trail. We consulted Fra Diavolo; he was gloomier than ever.

“If the _forestieri_ are so fastidious, they might go to Naples, the _giornaliere_--diligence--will start in an hour for Anversa, where they can get the train.”

“_Ma come si fa?_ What will become of you, the horse, and the mule?”

“Yesterday I brought these abominable animals as well as yourselves safely over that infamous devil’s road. To-day I return by the proper road, fit for a Christian, not merely for goats and asses,” he began angrily; then a thought struck him and he changed his tune:

“It is true there are greater dangers in going by a strange road than by one, however poor, that one is acquainted with. The animals are the _sindaco’s_, and more valuable than the _forestieri_ realize. Would they abandon me in this strange _paese_, where I have no relatives, not even a friend? Hearts of stone! At least they must pay a man to help lead back these poor, abandoned ones, which they may despise, but which the _sindaco_ doubtless finds useful.”

To see Fra Diavolo work himself into this state of righteous indignation was well worth the price we paid a man to help convey the blind horse and the lame mule back to Roccaraso. As the diligence did not leave for an hour, we saw the caravan start, Fra Diavolo riding the horse, the Scannan following upon the mule.

The carriage road leading down from the town is quite as steep, if a trifle smoother, than the trail; on one side there is a sheer drop of a hundred feet to a stony gorge below. The driver of the _giornaliere_ was very drunk; the harness of one horse, a restive gray, was made almost entirely of an old clothes-line. As soon as we started the gray sat down like a circus horse, his front feet firmly planted in the road before him, whereupon the clothes-line traces broke.

“What did I say, Manfredo?” cried the driver to the guard. “Would it not have been a sin to put a good harness on this _cavallaccio maledetto_? I tell you he has never been driven before. Would it be sensible to waste good leather traces upon this _brutta bestia_?”

“_Zitto, Orlando!_” said the guard, who was sober.

I am afraid I screamed to be let down from the box seat.

“Neither horse, harness, nor driver is fit for the road if the voyagers wish to reach Anversa alive,” J. said firmly; “send them back immediately and provide others, or I will appeal to the _sindaco_.”

A little, dried-up man scrambled out from the stuffy interior of the _giornaliere_ and joined the fray.

“The Signor Marchese is right, Manfredo; send Orlando back with that hangman’s brute. The return diligence will be here in ten minutes; we will take one of their animals, and you yourself must drive.” We waited a full half hour for the incoming stage. In the crowd of loiterers that quickly gathered we recognized the man we had paid to help Fra Diavolo lead the animals back to Roccaraso. “What have you done with the mule of his Excellency?” J. asked. The fellow pointed to the trail. “He is on his way home. Fra Diavolo found he could manage both beasts very well alone.”

When the other stage arrived, Manfredo persuaded its driver to exchange one of his horses with us, and Orlando Furioso to change places with him. A fat arch-priest put down the window and looked out.

“What in the name of all the saints is the matter with that evil horse?”