Chapter V: Part 5

He began to neglect his work, to spend all his time and money in hansom cabs, pursuing her whenever she went abroad. The police investigated his case, found him to be harmless and respectable, were content to keep an eye upon him, until that day when he tried to drive up to the private entrance of Buckingham Palace where the Queen was living. That was going too far even for the patience of Scotland Yard. Galli was arrested and given twenty-four hours to get out of England or into Bedlam. He left for the continent the same day, came to Rome, hired for his studio an old building, once the orange house of the Palazzo Borghese. It is built under a cliff, from the top of which ivy and _madre selva_ (mother of the wood--we call it clematis) hang over in trailing masses. One day a large snail from the ivy crawled through a broken pane of the window to the studio wall, down the wall, and up again, leaving a damp, slimy track which formed something like the letter V. A friend coming in surprised Galli standing staring at the wall with open mouth and eyes.

“Why, man, what are you looking at?”

“At the letter.”

“What letter?”

“The royal letter V.”

“What an odd chance!”

“You call it chance”--he smiled mysteriously.

“What do you call it?”

“It is the sign.”

“_Che pazzia_ (What madness)! what do you believe that little animal to be?”

“I believe what I believe, _amico mio_. The eyes of affection see what other eyes cannot see. It is a miracle, if you will, not more wonderful than others. The spirit of my august lady, the sovereign of England, has taken the shape of _quella lumaca benedetta_ (that blessed snail)!”

Galli tamed the royal snail, kept it in cotton wool and rose-leaves, fed it on tender green leaves till it died,--when he forgot the whole matter.

Soon after J. came to Rome as an art student. Galli was “discovered” by some of the Spanish artists, then the most powerful group of painters in Rome. For the moment Galli’s only home was a large tree outside the Porta Salaria. Some boards laid between the branches made his bed; he shared the tree with a flock of friendly turkeys. He had been fairly comfortable through the summer and autumn; with December came the fierce _tramontana_, blowing away the leafy walls of his house. The artists--they are the most charitable people in the world--clubbed together, hired a room for Galli in the Via Flaminia--fancy the real old Flaminian way--and fitted it up nicely as a bedroom and studio. One bitter winter evening J. and Villegas--they also had studios in the Via Flaminia--on their way home chanced to look up at his window. Outside on an iron balcony stood Galli, with nothing on but a thin cotton nightshirt.

“In the name of Bacchus, what are you doing?” roared the great Villegas, who had borne a large share of the expense of rescuing Galli from the turkey roost. Galli nodded, and smiled down upon them.

“_Ombre vivo_,” cried the fiery Spaniard, “go in, or you will take your death.” Galli only smiled the more and shook his head. The two below rushed upstairs and dragged him indoors.

“Don’t disturb yourselves, _amici miei_,” Galli explained, “my room, as you perceive, is cold, my bed has no blankets; I find if I stand out on the balcony in my shirt for a few moments, my room seems warm afterwards by comparison.”

Not long after this, Galli came up to J.’s table one night at the Café Greco (the haunt of artists). “Caro Signorino Jacca, you see many Americani; they are all immensely rich, as is known to you. For charity’s sake, sell a picture of mine to one of them.”

The hint was taken, a charming picture of Galli’s was unearthed (a small Madonna); the purchaser, an American girl, found. The day after the sale J. went to the Café Greco, where he knew he should find Galli, and with the inexperience of youth handed him the price of the picture, one hundred and fifty francs. If ever a poor painter-man needed one hundred and fifty francs, J. says that it was Galli at that moment. His boots were so broken that as he walked his toes came in view between the uppers and the lowers with every step; his trousers were deeply fringed about the ankle; his shirt was without a collar, he wore his inevitable long overcoat--buttoned up to conceal what was _not_ under it--and a shabby silk hat; whatever his fortunes he was never seen in any but a top hat; J. thinks it was the last trace of the coxcombry of his London youth.

“_Ecco il denaro_ (Here is the money)!” said J. Galli took it with a gay, swaggering air:

“_Grazie tante sai? Ci vedremo, caro Jacca_ (So many thanks, till we meet again).” With that he plunged across the street to the shop of the King’s hatter opposite in the Corso, where he bought a silk hat of the latest English model. He next trotted up to the Piazza di Spagna, got into the first cab on the stand, and engaged all the other cabbies to follow him: “Drive to the _tomba di Nerone_; you others, do me the favor to follow.”

The _tomba di Nerone_ is a ruin outside the walls of Rome which the archæologists say has nothing to do with Nero and never was a tomb. After they had gone a short distance Galli cried, “Halt.” The procession stopped short, Galli got out.

“What has happened, _padrone mio_?” asked the cabman.

“Nothing at all; you may now take your place at the end of the cue!” He dismissed the man with a wave of the hand and got into the second cab. Riding in this progressive fashion, by the time they reached the _tomba di Nerone_, Galli had ridden by turn in all the carriages.

“With your help, my friends,” he said to the cabbies, “I will climb to the top of the tomb;” two of them boosted him up. “If you will listen, I will tell you some things about the great Nero you never heard before. He was, after all, an artist; the historians have been too hard upon him, as we artists ought not to forget.”

Perhaps Galli’s long speech glorifying Nero set the present fashion for the whitewashing of Cæsars generally! The cabmen squatted round on their hunkers, smoked their pipes and listened, for the enlightenment of future _forestieri_--till Galli scrambled down from the rostrum, and jumped into the first cab, crying,--

“_Andiamo!_ to the Piazza di Spagna, as we came!”

At the Café Greco that evening Galli, penniless but proud of his adventure, borrowed of Signorino Jacca twenty centesimi (four cents) to buy a piece of bread and a few pickled gherkins, which he brought back in a piece of paper and munched contentedly for his supper.

Remembering Galli’s talent for likenesses, J. once persuaded a pretty young American girl to sit to him for her portrait. When they arrived at the studio for the first sitting, the room was so littered with rubbish that there was hardly space to turn round; tiers of vile-smelling old petroleum cases were piled against the wall. “What on earth have you got in those boxes, Galli?” J. demanded.

“They contain my invention,” said Galli.

“May one ask its nature?”

“_Altro!_ it is the model of a bridge to cross the Atlantic from Italy to the United States.”

It was a cold day; to warm the room for his sitter, Galli had picked up a few bits of charcoal, which smouldered in a frying-pan without a handle (his only stove) in the middle of the studio. While Galli was finding a chair for the lady, J. discovered seven rat traps, each inhabited by a large family of mice.

“They disturbed me so much, scrabbling about and gnawing things,” Galli explained, “that I was obliged to catch them.”

“If the mice disturb you, why do you keep them? You have not the heart to kill them? Tell the janitor to put the traps in a pail of water; it will be over in a minute,” said the practical American girl.

“Drown them--my only companions? See--their beautiful little ears are veined like the petal of a flower, look at their bright eyes, their dear little feet.” He held the cage up to the light. “They know me, they depend upon me for their food!”

He took half a roll--J. says it was half of Galli’s own breakfast--from his pocket and began crumbling it into one of the traps.

“Show us what you have been painting lately, Signor Galli,” said the young lady. The old man moved his easel into the light.

“This is my latest picture.”

J. says that American girl showed real breeding; she neither laughed nor cried at the thing Galli uncovered. If it was not a picture it was the work of a man of rare imagination. The divine spark had kindled at a moment when no tools were at hand. His credit on that almost inexhaustible fund, the generosity of his brother artists, had long been overdrawn. His friends were tired of supplying canvas, paints, brushes. Galli lacking everything, possessed only of the idea, could not rest till it was expressed. He had cut off the tail of his gray flannel shirt, stretched it for a canvas, found a piece of old blue cardboard, pasted it on for the sky; he had dried lettuce leaves and applied them for the middle distance, and used for the detail of the foreground bits of dried water-melon rind and other such rubbish. The “picture” was a thing to draw tears from a stone!

The rumor of the invention in the petroleum boxes suggested to some of the younger artists a plan by which fresh interest might be aroused for Galli’s benefit. They asked him to prepare a lecture explaining the theory of his bridge. Tickets were sold and quite a large audience gathered at the Artists’ Club to hear him. When he appeared some of the more boisterous spirits began to guy him; this nettled the old fellow:

“You perhaps think this invention of mine an impossibility,” he began. “To show you how simple it is to get to America without going on one of those abominable steamers, I will explain to you how to get to the moon. You all know that the moon is _una femina_ (a female)? Well, all females are devoured by curiosity. Only let all the people upon the earth assemble together in one place, and the moon will observe that something out of the common is going on down here: she will approach nearer and nearer to see what it is all about, until she gets so near that all we shall have to do is to jump over on her and then she will not be able to get away.”

* * * * *

[Galli’s last commission was to decorate one of the cheap Roman cafés. Villegas says that it was a wonderful piece of work, full of power and originality. Not long after it was finished some smug swine of a painter (one of those poor craftsmen who have cheapened the name of Italian art) persuaded the proprietor to let him paint out Galli’s work and redecorate the café with his own vulgar trash. This broke the old man’s heart; soon after he was found dead in his studio lying between two chairs. It was inevitable that he should come to some such end, and a thousand times better for him to drop in harness than to wear out the years in idleness. Unlike my friend, the newsboy-rumseller-grandfather of princes, _his_ only joy was in labor, in striving to express to others the beauty that possessed his soul. Is it not by this sign that the elect are known?]

IX

BLACK MAGIC AND WHITE--WITCH’S NIGHT

PALAZZO RUSTICUCCI, ROME, March 16, 1899.

Letters from Maine and New Hampshire give accounts of dreadful freshets and blizzards. We read them with some surprise, and then go up to the terrace and pick our pansies and violets. We have some fine spirea and lilacs coming on fast! The wall flowers are already in bloom, and the roses make occasional little gifts, but it is far too early for these dear ones to give their perfect blossoms. Rose week--rose madness--in Rome comes at the end of April.

The strangest thing about life in Rome is that you not only do as the Romans do, but end by thinking as the Romans think, feeling as the Romans feel! Take, for example, the feeling most of the foreign residents have about the evil eye, the _malocchio_ or _jettatura_, as it is indifferently called. I never knew an Italian who did not hold to this superstition more or less. Americans who have lived long in Rome either reluctantly admit that “there does seem to be something in it,” or if they are Roman born, quietly accept it as one of those things in heaven and earth that philosophy fails to take account of. In some things the Italian is free from superstition compared with the Celt or the Scot: for instance, the fear of ghosts or spirits is so rare that I have never met with it; on the other hand, the belief in the value of dreams as guides to action is deep rooted and widespread. The dreambook in some families is hardly second in importance to the book of prayer. The Italian’s eminently practical nature makes him utilize his dreams in “playing the _lotto_,” as the buying of lottery tickets is called. To dream of certain things indicates that you will be lucky and should play. The choice of the number is the chief preoccupation of the hardened lottery player. It is decided by the oddest chance,--the number on a banknote which one has lost and found again, the number of a cab which has brought one home from some delightful festivity. The number must always be associated with something lucky. I remember in Venice once calling on a friend who lives in a noble old palace on the Canale Grande. The _pali_, the dark posts rising out of the green water for the mooring of gondolas, bear the heraldic colors of the owner of the palace, and the doge’s cap, showing that the family gave a doge to Venice. Stepping from my gondola to the water-worn marble stair, I was helped by one of the servants, an old man with the suave, sympathetic manners that make the Italians the best servants in the world. I put him down as a majordomo of the old school whom my friends probably had taken over with the palace, the library, and the historic murder that goes with them. I had brought some flowers, which he insisted upon carrying. He led the way across a square courtyard to an outer stairway with a wonderful carved marble balustrade, lions rampant at the top and bottom. Suddenly he stopped and whispered to me:

“Signora,--a thousand excuses for the liberty,--but will you have the inexpressible gentility to tell me your age?”

The question was so startling that he got the right answer before my inevitable counter-question, “Why do you wish to know?” which he pretended not to hear, drowned in a flood of gratitude.

“You have conferred an immense benefit on me. The signora is expecting you.”

He had my wrap off and the drawing-room door open in a twinkling. That was not fair play; he had his answer: I would have mine. I put my question to his mistress. She laughed indulgently.

“Beppino is up to his old tricks. I told him this morning I was expecting a lady he did not know; he was on the lookout for you. When a stranger comes to the house for the first time it is the greatest possible luck to play in the _lotto_ the figures which make up his age.”

Our servants all play regularly, sometimes winning small sums, always imagining that they will win the _quaterno_. The lottery and the _Monte di pietà_--somehow one associates them together--are now under government control, as they were formerly under the control of the Church. It is assumed as a foregone conclusion that men will gamble, that men will pawn their goods; therefore it is expedient that these inevitable concomitants of city life should be administered by the government, in order that the accruing profits should return to the people by helping to pay the expenses of their government. The lottery always appears to me like a tax offered to the citizens in the form of a gilded pill.

The _Monte di pietà_ seems to be a really beneficent institution; it is well administered, the percentage charged on the money loaned being as low as is practicable. Poor old Nena’s coral earrings and gold beads live there chronically, only appearing upon her small person periodically on “feast” days. Several times webs of fine linen, silverware, and other household furnishings have been offered me at so low a price by one of our clients (we use the old Roman term for the army of hangers-on which has grown up about us) that I feared to buy them lest I should be purchasing stolen goods. On investigation I found the woman’s business was to buy unredeemed pledges at the regular sales of the Monte, and to hawk them about to private customers. After that I had not the heart to buy anything she offered, it seemed like building our house of the driftwood of despair. The Monte is a huge gray palace occupying a whole square behind the Palazzo Santacroce. Over the main entrance hangs a life-sized crucifix. The institution was founded in the year 1539 and has been in operation ever since.

The evolution of Christian out of pagan Rome is not more interesting than the evolution still going on of Rome the modern capital out of that picturesque, mediæval Rome of the “forties,” which my mother has described to me so vividly that it is as if I myself had seen it.

Since we have been here, the old meek horse-cars have been taken off, and horrible “electrics” whiz by our door and stop at the corner of the Piazza of St. Peter’s. And--even worse, I am almost afraid to write it to you--we have a telephone!

A telephone in the Eternal City! In the beginning I was as much shocked by the idea as you can be. The first conversation over the wire consoled me. Ice-chests, electric cars, and telephones only bring home more strongly the feeling that life in Rome is modern, mediæval, and pagan, all at the same time; it is all here in strata, like the rubbish Signor Boni is excavating from the Roman Forum. When you first come here you assume that you must burrow about in ruins and prowl in museums to get back to the days of Numa Pompilius or Mark Antony. It is not necessary; you only have to live, and the common happenings of daily life--yes, even the trolley car and your bicycle--carry you back in turn to the Dark Ages, to the early Christians, even to prehistoric Rome!

The day our telephone was installed I was called by the ding-a-ling of the bell, and “_centrale_” put me in communication, not only with our friend, Mrs. Z----, but with the Rome of Horace and the witch Canidia as well.

“Can you come to dinner next Monday?” Mrs. Z---- began.

“We will come with leaps and shrieks of joy.”

“Wait; do not accept till you hear who else is coming. We are giving the dinner in honor of M. de Gooch.”

“So much the better. We like to meet distinguished Frenchmen.”

“You are sure you do not mind meeting this particular Frenchman?”

“Why in the name of common sense should we mind?”

“Well, you know what they say about him?”

“Yes.”

“And you are not afraid? I am positively grateful to you. We are having the hardest time to fill the eight places at the table.”

“What particular variety of heathen are you inviting?”

“American.”

That afternoon we had a visit from an American gentleman, a friend of ours and of the Z----’s.

“Shall we meet next Monday at the Z----’s dinner?” I asked in the course of conversation.

“No, they were good enough to invite me, but I got out of it.”

I stared at him--he is one of the Z----’s greatest friends.

“Yes, the fact is I will not go where I have to meet that man.”

“You? _you_ believe that M. de Gooch has the evil eye?”

“It is all very well for you to look scornful! Just wait a little. I used to take your point of view, but so many uncomfortable things happened that I now avoid the man like the plague.”

“What sort of uncomfortable things?”

“We were once at a hotel in Naples. The first time that person--it is not well to mention his name--came into the dining-room, a waiter stumbled and dropped a tray full of valuable Venetian glass; every piece was smashed: the second time, the big chandelier fell down from the ceiling. That evening the proprietor begged this person to leave the hotel, said all the other guests would go if he did not, as it was evident he had the _malocchio_. _Basta!_ let us speak of other things.”

After the visitor left I went up to the terrace to feed the goldfish. Pompilia was on her knees digging around the roots of the big honeysuckle. I looked at Soracte, beloved of Horace. Soracte looked at me.

“Pompilia, do you know any one who has the _malocchio_?” She turned pale, scrambled to her feet, and made the sign against witchcraft with the first and fourth finger.

“_Signora mia, che pavra mi ha fatto_ (What a fright you gave me)!” She reflected a moment: “You remember the _carbonaro_ who used to bring the charcoal every Saturday? I told you he cheated us; you discharged him. It was not true, he gave good measure. I do not wish to harm him, but every time he came into the kitchen some _disgrazia_ happened. The soup was burned, the milk curdled, or the salt got into the ice-cream.”

“Do you believe the _carbonaro_ wished to injure us? Did he desire to bring misfortune?”

“It is his misfortune to bring misfortune,” Pompilia reluctantly explained; “one may even be sorry for him, but one spits as one passes him, and makes the _corni_ (horns) with the hand behind the back to avert the _jettatura_. _Ma, Signora mia, per carità, parliamo d’altre cose_ (For charity’s sake, let us talk of other things)! Observe this noble tulip, the first to bloom of those Hollandish bulbs we set out in the autumn.” She feels the flowers to be hers quite as much as ours, as indeed they are, she is so faithful in caring for them.

We put on all our war-paint for the Z----’s party; so did the other guests. It was one of the best dinners I have seen in Rome. Everybody seemed on their mettle to make it go off well. It was put through with unlimited conversational fireworks and champagne. De Gooch thawed out as I have never known him to do before; he is usually congealed by the chilly atmosphere which he, poor man, brings with him. I asked Mr. Z---- how he accounted for the evil stories. He said:

“Some enemy, who spreads the reports, takes this dreadful way to destroy him!”

The dinner was so merry that the coming of the coffee instead of being a relief was a surprise. M. de Gooch after a moment’s hesitation refused the cup offered him.

“I am rather proud of my coffee, change your mind and try a little,” said Mrs. Z----.

I was sitting on the other side of De Gooch, and heard him say in a low voice,--

“Are you sure of your cook?”

“Perfectly; he is a Piedmontese, he has been with us ten years, his coffee may be trusted.”

Do you know what that meant? It meant that De Gooch is afraid of being poisoned, that poison is most commonly administered in coffee or chocolate, _vide_ the Roman idiom, “_Ha bevuto una tazza di cioccolata_ (He has drunk a cup of chocolate).” I asked Mr. Z---- if he believed anybody wanted to murder De Gooch. He said:

“I do not believe him in more danger of poison than of a lightning stroke. It is not wonderful, however, that he thinks he is.”

“Is not the _malocchio_ very like the voodoo?” I asked.

“It is a horse of the same color. Both came out of darkest Africa, whose shadows fall across the broad earth.”

I take back every word I ever said against missionaries!

Poisoning, like other sins, has two degrees, the mortal and the venial. If M. de Gooch is in no danger from the mortal, we, according to Nena and Pompilia, were in danger of the venial not so long ago. During a short absence of Pompilia’s we had a foreign cook, and parted with her not on the best terms. The day after she left Pompilia returned, coming to me in the course of the morning with a long list of groceries; those staples, _farina_, _Parmegiano_, and _caffé_, headed the memorandum.

“But we cannot have used up five kilos of coffee. It is impossible that we are out of flour and Parmesan cheese; we bought them only three days ago.”

You see I am getting on, I now manage--though it is highly disapproved of by the powers that be--to lay in a few groceries, which I buy at the _Unione Militare_--government stores like the Army and Navy Stores in London.

“When I returned this morning, there was not a crumb in the house,” said Pompilia. Nena was appealed to.

“Nena, what about the _Parmegiano_, the _farina_, and the _caffé_ you bought the other day?”

“Signora, I was obliged to throw them all into the _immondezza_ (garbage).”

“But why?”

“Signora! I say nothing. That black Tedesca, when she left, did not wish us others well, nor even your signorial selves. I did what I did for the best.” She looked at Pompilia for confirmation. The cook shook her handsome head.

“With respect, Nena has done right. I would neither have served on your table, nor allowed another to touch any food that black German had in her hands. What bad thing may she not have mixed with it?”

I suppose I looked annoyed at the thought of the good food wasted; they both eyed me judicially, but firmly.

“Remember, Madama, that you commanded me three times before I would take that blessed order to the _Unione_,” Nena urged. “I myself knew it was a waste of money to buy those groceries when the German was leaving so soon. You asked me the first time Monday, on the stairs; I told you that the shop shut early on account of a _festa_; you asked me again Tuesday, upon the terrace (you were potting the large acanthus at the time) if I had been to the _Unione_; I told you that my rheumatism was too bad for me to walk so far. You told me for the third time Wednesday, in this very room, in the presence of the Tedesca, to buy those things! I ask you, was it possible for me to longer disobey, especially as the Tedesca heard you give the order?”

Nena is perfectly honest in deed, if not in word; I would trust her with uncounted money. This was no comedy, such as they often play for my benefit; I felt the reality of it.

“What sort of bad thing do you mean? Poison?” I blurted out with the coarse Anglo-Saxon instinct of calling a spade a spade. Such brusqueness hurts the subtler Latin nature. “Signora! I make no charges. I would not say poison, no, but something that might make one very ill for a day or for an hour; how do I know?”

They got away as soon as they could; we have not spoken of the matter since. The next time I was at the Vatican I dropped into the Sala Borgia, and took a good look at the charming portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, by Pinturicchio, filled with a realizing sense that the Rome of the Borgias was not so far away from my Rome as I had formerly supposed.

It is hard for us to realize the deadly significance to an Italian of the suggestion that one may have the evil eye. I was walking one day with a young American girl to whom I had been unfolding some of the tragedies I have known connected with the superstition. She took it all lightly and joyously, after the manner of her kind; and later during our walk, when a saucy, tormenting beggar pursued us, she made the sign of the _corni_ as I had described it to her, shaking the hand slightly, with the first and fourth finger extended. Then the beggar became convulsed with anger and seemed almost beside herself, shrieking out such a torrent of abuse that we were glad to jump into a cab and fly from the wrath to come. The poor creature was not to be blamed: she knew that once the shadow of suspicion falls, it means social excommunication, banishment outside the pale of whatever society one belongs to--a thing, like illness or death, as much to be dreaded by the pauper as by the Pope. Many people, by the way, believed that Pius IX had the evil eye, and made the sign of the _corni_ behind hat or fan as they received his benediction in front of St. Peter’s. The Romans generally are not supposed to be as superstitious as the Neapolitans. In Naples most people wear, as a charm, a little hand of gold, coral, or mother of pearl, with the fingers in the attitude to avert evil. Even the horses wear horns upon their harnesses! Some of our Roman friends are not without faith in the efficacy of horns. One day, when my painter had occasion to go behind the big canvases in his studio, he found that an artist who had dropped in during his absence had drawn horns with a bit of charcoal all over the backs of his pictures. Later, when the work was finished and the Queen came to the studio to see it, the friend claimed some of the credit for the royal visit.

“You owe all your luck to my horns,” he said, half in fun, half in earnest.

June 24, 1899.

Last night was St. John’s eve. I gave Pompilia and Filomena a holiday, meaning to take the opportunity to get rid, with Nena’s aid, of some of the year’s accumulation of worn-out kitchen utensils. Pompilia is very obstinate about giving up such things; she must have had

From a red chalk drawing in the Collection of Mr. Thomas W. Lawson]

From a Copley Print. Copyright, 1901, by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston.]

a rag-and-bottle man for an ancestor. Nena, who sells every conceivable bit of trash I give her, aids and abets me in these acts of insubordination. She was not in her usual spirits. I heard her scolding the little Jew boy who brought home an old terra-cotta cinerary urn we had bought in the morning from his mother Sora Giulia.

“What dirty _robaccia_ do you bring into this clean house?” she demanded in her gruff sailor’s voice.

“_Cosa ne so io?_ the signori bought it to-day. I heard my father say it once contained the ashes of a soldier of the Pretorian guard.”

“What guard?”

“Of the old time, a hundred years ago, maybe; they were like the _carabinieri_.”

Nena took the urn, grumbling under her breath, “_Li mortacci tuoi_ (Your miserable dead)!”

“_Hein?_ what did you say?”

“_Va a mori ammazzato_ (Go and die killed)!” She slammed the door upon him.

A minute later she brought the urn into the den and put it carefully down on the table where I was writing. “That rascally boy of Sora Giulia’s brought this home.”

“You formerly were friendly with Sora Giulia.”

She wiped her eyes with a little red wrinkled hand that trembled; something troubled her seriously.

“What has happened? tell me frankly.”

She began to cry openly: “_Miché_ (the cat) has been gone three days; he will never return. I shall not again see that dear animal!”

“_Miché_ will come back; perhaps he has had a fight, as he did once before.”

“No, no, Signora! then he was only absent one night, after the manner of cats. No, _era troppo bello, era troppo bello_ (he was too beautiful),” she wailed. I suppose I looked as puzzled as I felt, for she broke into impassioned explanations. “He was too beautiful, he was fat and tender as well; _quelli maladetti Ebrei_ (those cursed Jews) have killed him to make one of their accursed feasts; they have doubtless already eaten him; _povera bestia, era troppo bello_!”

To console her I proposed that we get to work on the business before us. In a closet on the stairs, of which Nena has a duplicate key, Pompilia had locked up empty green wicker _ricotta_ baskets, marmalade bottles, petroleum cans, a pair of discarded brooms, and other such rubbish.

“Can you sell the petroleum cans?”

“_Ma certo_, I get a _paulo_ (ten cents apiece) for them. The poor use them for flower pots and for many other things.”

“And these old brooms, can you get anything for them?”

“The brooms I shall not sell. It would offend the _scoparo_, who is my friend and has a family to support; but as we happen to be in need of them, I will, with your permission, take these brooms home.”

“All the articles in this closet are yours, and welcome, on condition you take them away this evening. It is known to you that if Pompilia were here she would never let them go.”

“You have reason, Signora; I will go immediately, taking with me all I can carry and returning for the rest.”

After she left I went up to the terrace for the sunset. The swallows were swooping low overhead; the smell of the gardenias would have been overpowering indoors; the passion flower vine was in full bloom, the oleanders ablaze with tender pink blossoms the same color as the sky. As I was mooning about, leaning on the parapet and watching the blue fade out of Peter’s dome, I became aware of a hubbub in the street below. There were cries of “_Una strega, una strega_ (A witch, a witch),” “_Scacciala, scacciala_ (Chase her, chase her),” hoots of derision, screams of laughter.

“How she runs! _Brava vecchiarella_ (Good for you, old woman)!”

“_Viliacchi_ (Cowards)!”

The noise grew nearer, the crowd seemed to be stopping at our _portone_.

“_Che te possono scanna_ (May you be slaughtered)!” The deep bass voice was familiar. I leaned over the parapet just in time to see Nena, a tiny figure, with two brooms over her shoulder, turn and hurl defiance at her tormentors, in the front rank of whom I recognized the little Jew boy.

“_Guastate_ (May you waste away)! “With this true witch’s curse Nena managed to shut the door of the big _portone_ in the faces of her pursuers. I ran and opened the old green door of the apartment to let her in.

“What in the name of the apostles has happened?”

Nena was trembling with passion.

“Ah, that Hebrew Jew! I will punish him yet. He led the others on, saying I was a witch. Truly, Signora, it was not a happy chance that made you give me those brooms to take home this particular evening, the night on which the ignorant and superstitious believe that the witches ride. In every other house in the Borgo a dish of salt and a broom are placed outside the window, that the witches may be averted from entering and fly away on the broomstick. Doubtless Pompilia saved these brooms for that object--but, as you know, I am not superstitious, I don’t believe such stuff. To take me for a witch, _me_!”

Nena cannot be more than four feet seven inches high; she has a rough gray head, sharp black eyes, and a long nose. She wears a queer, old-fashioned three-cornered shawl over her stooping shoulders, her feet swim about in a pair of my old boots. There was, I confess, some excuse for the jest!

St. John’s eve! Witch’s night! In order that no harm may befall one, it is safest to sit up all night. To sit up all night alone, or in the company of one’s family, is rather cold comfort; so the sociable Romans spend the night in one vast nocturnal picnic. We left home at ten o’clock; in the Piazza Scossa Cavalli we found every cab gone except the _gobbo’s_ (hunchback’s). This was great luck, to be driven by the _gobbo_, all the more as it was by chance; if we had engaged him beforehand, it would not have counted. As soon as we started J. sneezed.

“_Salute, Signore_ (Your health, sir,--the equivalent of ‘Bless you’),” said the _gobbo_. This meant more luck. By the time we reached the Via Merulana the _gobbo’s_ white horse--a white horse is lucky--dropped into a walk. The crowd of cabs was so great that from there on to the Piazza San Giovanni we were obliged to move at a snail’s pace.

“_Volete spigo, Signori?_” cried a vendor, thrusting a bunch of lavender into the cab.

“_Bisogna prenderla, Signori_,” said the _gobbo_; “you must buy lavender for yourself, for me, even for my poor beast. It is the rule to wear lavender on St. John’s eve.” We bought lavender for the party, the white horse included.

A little farther on another vendor stopped us.

“How is this?” he said gravely; “you are without red carnations; that is not well.”

“He is right, Signori,” said the _gobbo_; “we must wear red carnations as well as lavender.”

We bought enough red carnations for an army.

“What do the lavender and the carnations signify?”

“Who knows, Signora? it is the custom to wear them. One says it brings _buona fortuna_, another that it keeps the witches away; it is well to be on the safe side.”

As the cab came to a dead stop for a moment outside a _trattoria_, a saucy boy sprang on the step and asked for a _soldo_ to buy a dish of snails.

“Do not refuse,” said the _gobbo_; “he is a good boy; it is the custom on the eve of San Giovanni to eat snails and _polenta_, as you may see for yourselves.”

Over the door of the _trattoria_ hung an illuminated transparency: on one side was a picture of a large snail, on the other a witch riding a broomstick.

“_Aglo, Aglo_ (Garlic). Who wants _aglo_? There is nothing so good against the _fascino_ (fascination) as _aglo_!”

We bought a pair of long-stemmed garlic blossoms, in shape not unlike the classic thyrsus.

“_Campanelle, campanelle_, who wants the _campanelle_? The witches fly away at the sound of these marvellous _campanelle_.”

Everybody but ourselves had apparently already bought _campanelle_; all the people in the carriages and on the sidewalk carried these small terra-cotta bells, which they rang violently at each other and at the witches. The bells were of two sizes.

“Buy a large one for yourself, Signore, and a small one for the lady,” counselled the _gobbo_.

“And one for you and one for the mare?”

“Naturally. The animal cannot well spare a hand to ring her _campanello_, so we will tie it about her neck.”

Peacock feathers were next offered; the _gobbo_ was prejudiced against them and advised us not to buy them. There seems to be a divided feeling about peacocks’ feathers; some people hold that they bring bad luck, others that they avert it.

We left the carriage at the piazza, which was lined with booths, illuminated with flaring torches. These stalls extend quite a distance down the Via Appia Nuova, outside Porta San Giovanni. Some displayed the classic bush, from the earliest time the sign of the wine shop. Outside one of the most important booths hung a large painted head of the wine god crowned with leaves, bearing the words, “_A Baccho_.” At some stalls fried pancakes and _gnocchi di patate_ were sold. _Gnocchi_ is one of the delicious Roman dishes. It is made of potatoes and corn meal, bewitched together into miniature oval croquettes, and served with a rich sauce of tomato conserve and Parmesan cheese; truly a dish fit for the gods. Near the _gnocchi_ booth was a stall hung with evergreens, where a man in white linen clothes and cap stood beside an enormous roasted hog, brandishing a huge knife.

“_Majale arosto--ah che bel majale_ (Roast pig--oh, what a beautiful pig).”

At some of the stands toys and dolls were sold. I was kept away from certain of these, as J. said the toys were shockingly indecent; those I saw were ordinary every-day toys which the elders bought for the children. When one goes to the _festa_ of San Giovanni one takes the whole family along,--grandmothers, grandfathers, babies, and all. The noisy people were all gathered together in the piazza and the Via Appia Nuova; the quieter sort were scattered about in groups on the outskirts of the crowd. On the right-hand side, at a little distance from the Church of St. John Lateran, there is a hillside with ancient ilex trees. This dark hillside was dotted with torches and candles, each the centre of a knot of people. We soon left the turmoil in the neighborhood of the booths, and strayed about among the quieter folks. Under a dark gnarled tree a group of people had made themselves comfortable. On the trunk above their heads two long garlic stalks were nailed crosswise to avert evil. Directly below the cross sat a lovely young woman suckling a large baby; it must have been eighteen months old. Beside her an aged woman held in her lap a four-year-old child whose chubby hands were stretched out to touch the nursling; in the shadow behind stood a grave bearded man. The huckster’s cart that had brought them was drawn up near by, the donkey could be dimly seen munching a bundle of hay.

“Behold Mary and the Child, St. Elizabeth and St. John, with the good St. Joseph taking care of them all,” said Vincenzo, who had seen us and followed us up from the piazza. As we stood entranced before this living Holy Family the moon rose full and yellow over the dark hillside; for a moment we saw it behind the head of that young mother like a halo. It was a group worthy the pencil of Raphael.

“_Che belli fanciulli_ (What beautiful children),” I said to Vincenzo. St. Elizabeth, hearing the innocent words, caught the little St. John behind her, scowling and muttering angrily at me.

“Come away, quickly,” said Vincenzo, urging me down the hill; “don’t you know that you must never praise a child in that way of all times on the night of San Giovanni!”

“It is time to go home,” said J. I begged a few minutes’ grace, for just at that moment a heavy car hung with laurel garlands drawn by milk-white oxen with gilded horns creaked into the piazza. The car was filled with young men in costume singing to the music of guitar and mandolin. They were all masked; from the trappings of the car and their cultivated voices we fancied them to be persons of some distinction.

A high tenor voice pierced the babel of sound: “_Sei la Rosa piu bella che c’è_ (Thou art the most beautiful rose that is)!”

It was near midnight: the fun was growing fast and furious. J., who from the first had objected to the expedition, backed up by Vincenzo, now declared that it was impossible for me to stay longer. An unwilling Cinderella, I was torn away on the stroke of twelve. “It is not a seemly revel,” I was told; “dreadful things happen, respectable people do not stay after midnight.” To me it was all a wonderful revelation; I was in pagan Rome, where Bacchus and Vesta were worshipped, where Italy’s spoiled children, the Roman populace, took their pleasure, as they have done with little change ever since Rome was, since “step bread” was distributed gratis on the steps of the Capitol, and the costly games of the Colosseum kept them amused and pacific!

Till broad daylight I heard the people coming home ringing their little terra-cotta bells, singing sntches of the song of the evening: “_Sei la Rosa piu bella che c’è._” As I look back at that riot of youth and age, where the faces of faun and satyr leered at nymph and dryad, the whole pagan scene is sweetened and purified by that vision of the Holy Family.

X

ISCHIA

CASAMICCIOLA, ISLAND OF ISCHIA, July 10, 1899.

Our coming to this volcanic islet--tossed up out of the sea an æon ago, still warm with the earth’s vital heat--was due to chance, like most things that are worth while. We had driven over that morning from Sorrento to Castellamare through odorous orange and lemon groves, and were so filled with the beauty of land and sea, that going to any city, even to our Rome, seemed a waste of life. We reluctantly boarded the crowded train for Naples. In the same carriage were a _mercante di campagna_ and his daughter, the most lovely Italian girl I ever saw. Her hair clustered in purple shadowed masses like bunches of grapes about her perfect face; her complexion was golden and red--no pink and white prettiness, but a rich and memorable beauty. They had left home early; to have more time in the city, they partook of their breakfast, Bologna sausage, bread, garlic, and wine on the train. They were so friendly that we forgave them everything--even their fourteen bundles which entirely filled the luggage rack--even their garlic! The father opened the conversation.

“My son, he is in America; he worked on the Brooklyner Bridger. You have seen it, yes?”

“We have seen it many times, we have even crossed it.”

This brought us all very near together. Putting his hand into his pocket the _mercante di campagna_ brought out a fistful of rice, which he presented to me.

“Behold a sample of the rice I am taking to Naples to sell.”

Not knowing exactly what else to do with it, I tied the rice in a corner of my pocket handkerchief. He next handed me the _Corriere di Napoli_, two days old. The first thing in the newspaper that caught my eye was an advertisement of the _Società Napoletana di Navigazione a Vapore_. “The steamer for Ischia sails at eleven o’clock; return tickets eight francs.”

We were due in Naples at ten, the train for Rome left at three! Five hours in Naples, which has for us but three resources: the museum, the aquarium, the antiquarians! It was the day

From a photograph]

of Sts. Peter and Paul, a national holiday--that meant the museum would be closed; we know every fish in the great aquarium, the finest in the world. Do we not always go there? did we not spend two hours there on our way down, pay to see the awful octopus fed, and to receive a shock from the electric fish? A visit to the antiquarians for some varieties of junk even more enticing than our Roman haunts would cost us more than eight francs.

Ischia! The name set vibrating a deep chord of memory. O Edward Lear, Edward Lear, you are responsible for many vagarious wanderings! I could think of nothing but the picture in the Nonsense Book of the old person of Ischia. Is he still growing friskier and friskier? still dancing jigs, eating figs?

“Have you ever been to Ischia?” I asked the _mercante di campagna_.

“Frankly, the sea incommodes me too much to make the voyage; but I have a brother who drives a cab at Casamicciola. The signori should not fail to visit the island,” he said.

The girl smiled encouragement. “This is just the season for the baths,” she said; “they are miraculous for rheumatism, gout, every kind of lameness. When they went there Olivetta, the wife of my uncle Ercole, could not walk at all--_adesso, corre com’un diavolo_ (now she runs like a devil).”

“_Pur troppo_ (Altogether too much)!” grumbled the _mercante_, just like any other brother-in-law.

“The signori will employ my uncle Ercole? he drives a piebald horse. They will give the uncle and aunt _tanti saluti_ from me?” the beauty persisted.

Her influence, combined with Edward Lear’s, was too strong to resist. Rome is always there; it was now or never for Ischia!

We caught the little steamer which carried us steadily enough across the Bay of Naples. The shores were a living panorama done in sapphire and emerald. Fishing smacks with slanting lateen sails colored, discolored, one with a picture of Maria Stella del Mare painted upon it, flitted by us before the light breeze. The steamer had once been a private yacht; though her brasses are neglected and her deck less like polished satin than it must have been in her palmy days, she still has a sporting, rakish air, in keeping with our escapade. We passed Procida, a shining isle of beauty, where I was half tempted to land and search for the enchanted princess who must inhabit it!

We landed at Casamicciola in a small boat. The patient women waiting on the quay took our trunks on their heads, the cabmen mobbed us politely, trying to wrest our hand-bags from us.

“Ercole!” cried J. “Is Ercole, he who drives a piebald horse, among you?”

“_Ecco mi quà, Signor Marchese_ (Behold me here, Lord Marquis)!” Ercole (Hercules) scarcely looks his part. He is small and wizened, but he has the merry eyes of his brother, the _mercante di campagna_, while his laugh oddly recalls his lovely niece’s. From the beginning Ercole took and still keeps possession of us. “First to the Piccola Sentinella,” he announced. The piebald breasted the steep hill at a sharp pace. Ten minutes’ climb brought us to the Hotel of the Small Sentinel, a low building with a roof of light corrugated iron. Most of the hotels in southern Italy are old palaces or monasteries, heavily built of stone or stucco. Madam Dombré, the proprietress (she is an Englishwoman and makes us exceedingly comfortable), says that all the buildings put up on the island since the earthquake have been constructed under government supervision and are lightly built like the hotel. Everything here dates from the earthquake. Ercole says such a thing took place before the _terremoto_, or so many years after it. Mme. Dombré, whose daughter was killed by it, speaks as if it happened yesterday.

“There was a concert in the dining-room of our hotel at the time, it was on the 28th of July, 1883, mid-season, you know; the house was full. There came a dreadful rumbling noise. The house shook once, twice, sideways, and then came crashing down in a ruined heap. The pianist at the piano, the singer with the song on her lips, were dashed into Purgatory without an instant’s warning! Out of a population of thirty-five hundred, seventeen hundred of our people perished in the earthquake.”

Since that time Casamicciola has been almost deserted by foreigners who are now only just beginning to return; a few more come each year.

The morning after our arrival Ercole drove me willy-nilly to the _stabilimento_, as they call the baths. Somehow he had divined the heel of Achilles,--my bicycle ankle. The smiling _medico_ agreed with him that the treatment was “indicated,” and forthwith delivered me over into the hands of Olivetta--she who once was lame and now runs like a devil. The baths are large, not so smartly appointed as some of the German establishments, such as Homburg or Ems, yet they have a certain classical flavor of architecture, pleasantly suggestive of the old Greek inhabitants who were driven away from the island (they called it Pithecusa) in the fifth century B.C. by the fearful eruptions of Mt. Epomeo. Olivetta led me to a small marble room, put me in a comfortable chair, placed the offending ankle on a bench, and bade me “_abbia pazienza_ (have patience),” while she went to get the “_fango_.” In five minutes she returned, bringing a jar full of liquid gray clay very like what sculptors use.

“_Guardi, questo fango viene proprio caldo dalle viscere della terra_ (Observe, this mud comes hot from the entrails of the earth).” The giant Typhoëus, transfixed by Zeus’s thunderbolt, lies chained under the island; the roar of the earthquake is his voice, the lava flood his tears. You may believe it or not: I do not find it difficult to accept. Poor old giant, I feel sorry for him, reduced to tending hospital fires, to warming up poultices for the gouty!

Olivetta built a sort of mould of hot clay wherein the foot was comfortably coddled for thirty minutes. She next gave it a hot douche for five minutes, then left me to meditate for another thirty minutes in a warm mineral bath which smelt of hot flat-irons.