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?”

“Illustrissimo, the animal is like one of yourselves,—he does not like to work,” said the thin little man, a lawyer from Scanno.

“Grazie, grazie (thank you),” said the arch-priest, taking the chaff in good part.

Once we had started, everything went like magic. The drive from Scanno to Anversa is as fine as the Cornice or the Sorrento drives. It is mostly down hill, and took us just three hours; the return trip takes five. I had been almost afraid to sit outside lest, after our sleepless night, I should go to sleep and fall off, but the great gray mountains and the grim gray gorges kept me awake. The road runs nearly all the way beside the river Saggittario, which has more moods than one would have imagined possible in a single thread of water. Sometimes it dashes, white and angry, over a rough bottom between rocky sides; then it spreads out into clear pools, “alive with trout,” the lawyer said. Sometimes it is green and full of fight, sometimes brown, still, and lazy. We saw an eagle light on a crag far over our heads. We were really dazed with the wonders we had seen by the time we reached Anversa, where we took the train. We had to go all around Robin Hood’s barn, so that we did not get home to Roccaraso till after dark.

On our way from the station we were overtaken by Mariuccia, who was eager to hear how we had fared.

“Aimé, ’Gnor’, when I saw Fra Diavolo return with the animals and without your illustrious selves I was much afflicted! The inhabitants of Scanno sono gente mal educata, e di nessuna fede (people without breeding or good faith). The sindaco himself was much alarmed, good man; I must take the news to his house that you have returned safely.”

“What is that you are carrying on your head, Mariuccia?”

“’Gnora, it is a little chest.” It was the most fascinating little cinque cento chest I ever saw, half the usual size, finely carved, and looking as if it might be meant to hold jewels or treasure, as indeed it was.

“To whom does it belong? Where are you taking it?” I touched it with my bare hand: it was encrusted with earth.

“It belongs to one who is forgotten. I am taking it to the house next yours. It is for una povera creatura morta (a poor dead child). The mother will give the cassetta a thorough cleaning, and it will be as good as when it was first put in the ground.”

“Good-night, Mariuccia! it is cold, we must hurry.”

“Andiamo presto: Let us hasten; I too am in fretta (a hurry); we must carry the infant to the church to-night.”

There was no getting rid of Mariuccia; the lid of the chest clap-clapped with every step she took; the thing smelt of mortality.

“Where did the chest come from?”

“’Gnora, a few years ago when they built the railway an ancient cemetery was disturbed. The bones of those who had been buried were all put into the new graveyard, and such of the coffins as were whole were stored in that old ruined church. When the very poor have need, they help themselves. I am taking this to my cousin, but I would not have it known by the neighbors, so I waited till dark, and, as you see, I am taking it home by the quietest way.”

We were at last at our own door.

“Buona notte, Mariuccia.”

“Felicissima notte, ’Gnora.”

J. says things have changed very little since he made his first trip through the Abruzzi in the early eighties. He with two other artists went first to Saracinesco, where they stayed at the house of Belisario, the son of an old model of Fortuny’s (the great Spanish painter). They had heard about the place from another Roman model called Fagiolo or the Bean. When Fagiolo was a boy, his father gave him a large bag of beans one morning and sent him out to plant a field. It was a fine, bright day, and the boy, meeting other boys, decided to put off his work till afternoon and went off birds’-nesting. Suddenly the sun began to set and he realized that he had done nothing with the beans. He hurried to the field, and digging one deep hole buried all the beans; then he went home.

“You are late, my son. Where have you been?” asked the father.

“There were many beans; I have planted them all,” said the boy. By and by, when it was time for vegetables to come up, the father was very much troubled that nothing came up in the bean-field. One day he discovered in the farthest corner a perfect thicket of tangled, spindly beans. From that day the boy was known as Fagiolo.

The three artists were invited by Fagiolo to a feast, which J. describes as the most primitive he has ever shared. They found the family all gathered in the large living-room of a rather superior peasant’s house. The floor was of mother earth, otherwise the room resembled our own glorious kitchen at Roccaraso; there were golden-brown bladders of lard and strings of garlic hanging from the ceiling; in front of the open hearth were hand-wrought andirons with little cages at the top in which the pipkins of food were kept hot. Fagiolo made them welcome, and his wife having announced that the polenta was ready, the husband literally laid the board. The guests and the family seated themselves, the children on wooden stools, the grown-up people on rush-bottomed chairs, and Fagiolo took a large board from the corner. With a knife he scraped off the dried meal sticking to it out at the door, the fowls gathering to feed upon the scrapings. Then he passed his hand across the board and, finding it comparatively smooth, laid it upon the knees of the company, who were sitting in a circle. Next he took from the crane, where it hung over the fire, a large three-legged iron pot of polenta (hasty pudding) and emptied it upon the board. His wife with a long pudding-stick spread out the mush to the proper thickness, then each person staked out his claim by drawing a circle in the polenta with a leaden spoon. The smallest child, they noticed, drew the biggest circle, and J. confesses to having drawn the smallest. Next Fagiolo took from the cage in the andiron, where it had been keeping warm, a saucepan filled with snails stewed in brown gravy, and helped each person to a share of the snails, putting it down carefully within the limits of the circle. That was all the feast, except the inevitable vino di paese, which really takes the place of meat with these people.

By the advice of their host, Belisario, the artists had given their money to Fagiolo to keep, as he was known to be honest, and would be less likely to be suspected of having it than Belisario, in whose house they were staying. After the snail feast Fagiolo went off to the inn. Flattered by the honor the strangers had done him, he drank more than was good for him, and began to boast of the money, several hundred francs, the painters had confided to him. The sum grew in telling to several thousand, and the news getting to Belisario that Fagiolo had boasted at the inn, he begged the artists to depart without delay, saying that he could no longer be responsible for their safety.

“The signori must depart, but to-day, at once; and yet they must appear not to depart.”

“Explain yourself. How is it possible to depart and to appear not to depart?”

“Ma, è semplicissimo! The illustrious ones go out to sketch every day, is it not so? Well, to-day they go as usual, but they do not return, and these dogs will believe that they of Olevano have robbed them. The signori must make haste to reach Tivoli before dark; there are brigands about; the carabinieri are on the lookout for them.”

“Nobody ever troubles artists.”

“For a good reason, they are not usually worth meddling with. If it had not been for that cabbage-headed imbecile, Fagiolo! Ask him if I tell you the truth.”

Fagiolo was even more frightened than Belisario. He actually wept.

“Per carità, my Signors, depart! depart! If you hope to see another day, if you would not see your poor Fagiolo, who has served you faithfully, put in prison for your murder.”

The three artists started, carrying their sketching kits, wearing their red berrettas (flat red caps, something like Tam o’ Shanters). They took the precaution to tuck their soft felt hats inside their waistcoats, and, leaving the rest of their traps to be sent after them, set out merrily on their sixteen-mile tramp to Tivoli. The road was most beguiling; it leads through Vicovaro along the river Anio—down which floated the mother of Romulus with her immortal twins—past “Cold Digentia,” where the winter birding nets were set on Horace’s Sabine farm. Is it wonderful that they loitered? that they even delayed to make un leggero bozzetto (just a note) of a small gray castello perched like an eagle’s nest on the top of a high hill? A white path zigzagged up to the gate, an olive-grove clustered at the foot of the hill, a row of stone pines ran along the sky line. The mere “bozzetti” grew into serious sketches. All at once they saw outlined against the sky a long procession of peasants coming back from their work in the fields below. The women—riding in pairs upon the patient mules and asses, hung with bells that jingled at every step—were singing the litany, the men made the responses in their gruff voices.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena.”

“Ora pro nobis!” then came the guttural “angk, angk!” of the men, and the blows of their heavy sticks upon the backs of the poor beasts.

“They are singing the Ave Maria, which means that it must be late,” said the eldest of the three artists, the Spaniard, Catherez. “We must be going.”

It was nearly sunset, and they were not half way to Tivoli. They exchanged their berrettas for their felt hats, and began to walk in good earnest. Soon after dark they met a band of carabinieri, who brought them to a halt.

“Where do you come from?”

“Saracinesco.”

“That is so likely! From what inn?”

“It should be known to you that there is no inn there where one may sleep. We stayed at the house of Belisario.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Tivoli.”

It began to rain. They thought they had answered enough questions and were impatient to be off. J. was the first to move. A guard caught him by the coat and began to feel of him suspiciously.

“What have you got there?” He pulled out the innocent berretta. “A disguise? What do honest men want with disguises? Have you any papers to prove that what you say is true?”

They had all taken out sportsmen’s licenses before leaving Rome, but, unfortunately, they had mixed the papers up. Ricardo Villegas loftily presented a license describing J.

“How is this? English? five foot eleven? fair complexion? By the mass, these papers are stolen! This man is no Inglese. He is not above five feet seven, and he is as dark as a Moor. In the name of the King, I arrest you.”

They were marched off to Tivoli, to spend the night in the vast, bare guard-room, where every hour the grave carabinieri came and went in squads, as the guards were changed. In the morning they were allowed to send telegrams to their respective consuls in Rome, and by ten o’clock they were set at liberty, with a warning to be more careful in future.

The artists suspected, justly or unjustly, that the weather had much to do with their arrest. It was a miserable evening, when three possible brigands in the hand might be reckoned as worth more than a whole band in the bush!

VII

VIAREGGIO—LUCCA—RETURN TO ROME

The long mole runs far out into the sea, the light-house stands at the extreme end; here we watch the fishing-boats come in every evening, the sailors poling them along the mole to their harborage in the river. They build boats at Viareggio; the real interest of the town, quite apart from the watering-place life, centres in the weatherbeaten sailors, the cumbrous craft with their rich colored sails, the smell of tar, oakum, and fish. This morning we watched a pair of old salts calking the seams of a dory; they had a fire and a pot full of black bubbling stuff, “pitch, pine, and turpentine.” It is late in the season for sea-bathing; this morning we were the only people who braved the pleasant cool water. There is a fine beach with a gradual slope and, as far as I have discovered, no undertow. Last night we walked in the pineta, the wonderful old pine forest that embraces Viareggio, spreading out in a half circle, sheltering it from the north winds and leaving it open to the kindly influences of the sea.

Viareggio is full of memories of Shelley; we saw the place where his body was washed ashore, where Trelawney found and burned it in the old classic fashion. We heard the question discussed whether the yacht Don Juan was lost by accident (she was a crank boat) or had been run down by a felucca, whose piratical sailors believed Lord Byron to be on board with a chest of treasure. I suppose we shall never know the truth, so as I am loath to think ill of any sailor, I shall go on believing it was an accident.

It is strange to find ourselves again on the high road of travel, after the loneliness of the Abruzzi. Since the days of the Phoenicians, invading armies of Huns, Goths, Longbeards, palmers, pilgrims, and their descendants, tourists and tramps have patrolled every step of the road we are now travelling.

We drove from Viareggio to Lucca, two and a half hours, through the beautiful Tuscan country in its glowing harvest colors,—every farm a glory, with heaped barrels of grapes waiting to be trodden into wine, strings of yellow, yellow Indian corn and scarlet peppers hanging over the fronts of the houses. The way led through an olive grove: all about us were twisty witch trees, a misty gray wood in which one looked right and left for Merlin and Vivian. Then came a chestnut forest, the great bursting burs filled with big shiny Italian chestnuts. We stopped at the house of a vine grower known to our driver, and asked leave to visit the vineyard. The proprietor, a tall lean man, with a touch of the faun about him (J. wants to paint him as the god Pan) welcomed us cordially. The large Tuscan speech strikes sweetly on our ears after the clipped Italian of the Abruzzi. Even the working people in Tuscany have a certain elegance in turning a phrase which southern Italians of far greater culture lack. Nothing could be more up to date than this Tuscan vineyard, almost as tidy and progressive as the German vineyards. That, after all, is the great thing about travelling; you visit not only different countries, but different ages. A thousand years lie between my friend “Pittsbourgo’s” Etruscan method of ploughing, at Pietro Anzieri, and the system on which this neat thrifty Tuscan vineyard is run.

“Those look like American Isabella grapes!” we exclaimed.

“They are what they appear to be,” said the vignajuòlo; “behold an experiment! Many of my best vines were destroyed by the phylloxera, an obnoxious insect which girdles the roots so that the vines die! Do you think I would allow myself to be vanquished by a mere insect? I send to North America for these hardy vines which have so bitter a root that the vile insect touches them not. I graft the native Italian grape upon the American vine and wait. Meanwhile, until I am sure of my grafting, not to lose all profit, I allow the American vines to bear grapes from which I make wine of some sort. I tell you in confidence, it is only fit for contadini to drink, I would not offend you by offering it to you. Ma, pazienza! by and by, I shall cut back the vine to the grafting, and the native vine will flourish upon the American root! Then I shall have a wine worthy to offer vostra signoria!”

Here is progress for you; here is a man not satisfied to do as his fathers did; here is a country of to-day, a people with a future!

Having made the giro of the vineyard, we came back to the large stuccoed farmhouse which had originally been painted a violent pink; now the color, softened by sun, rain, and time, is a rich variegated yellow. With a gracious gesture, our host threw open the door, and stood smiling in the sun, the matchless human sunshine of Italy in his dark shy face. When he talked about his vines he had been all animation; the ceremony of inviting a lady into his dwelling was rather irksome to him.

“The signori will do me the honor of entering my poor abode?” He showed us into an apartment only a shade less austere than the waiting-room of a convent. It was clean, cold, and of a frightful bareness. Let us hope there was an enchanting kitchen—like our never-to-be-forgotten kitchen at Roccaraso—somewhere in the offing, where our handsome Pan might take his ease.

“The signori will do me the honor to try a glass of my wine?”

J. asked if he had any wine of Chianti. He laughed.

“Eccellenza, shall I tell you the truth? I have tuns of wine which I shall sell for Chianti. All you forestieri know that name and demand that wine. The real wine of Chianti would not supply the town of Lucca. Chianti is a small paese; its wine is good, who shall deny it? but not so good as that which you will honor me by trying!”

I held out for a glass of the “Americano”; it tastes rather like the unfermented grape juice we have at home.

Lucca at last! a dear, queer, delightful old town with ramparts and fortifications in fine preservation. It has a delicious slumberous quality: its glorious days are in the past; its mediæval walls effectually shut out the rustle and bustle of to-day. My earliest childish impressions concerning Lucca centre about certain long thin glass bottles bearing the words “Sublime Oil of Lucca,” always in evidence at home when there was to be a dinner party. Cross German Mary, the swarthy culinary goddess of our youth, used to hold one of those deceitful bottles gingerly in a clawlike hand, letting the sublime liquid trickle drop by drop into the yellow mixing-bowl wherein she compounded salad dressing such as I have not since tasted. Later in life I was once delayed by a crowd on State Street, Chicago, outside a wholesale warehouse on which was written in large letters “Cotton Seed Oil.” I had to wait for a moment while a crate full of spick and span new empty bottles with fresh gold labels bearing the familiar legend “Sublime Oil of Lucca” was carried into the warehouse! Can you solve me that mystery?

During our first dinner in Lucca, I inevitably demanded “un poco di quest’olio sublimo.”

“Ecco lo quà, Signora (behold it here, lady),” said the fat waiter, offering a familiar straw-covered flask of oil, just like those we have in Rome. Sublime Oil of Lucca in long, thin, deceitful bottles is not to be had in Lucca!

My second impression of the town is connected with another cook, the excellent Pompilia: she was born here and first went out to service with a great lady who lived in Florence in the winter, and at Bagni di Lucca in the summer. I have often been made to feel my inferiority to that lady, and enjoyed a certain revenge in refusing to drive out to see Bagni di Lucca, whose fine hotels and bath establishment do not tempt us. We prefer Lucca and the “Universe,” a queer old caravansary, whose limitations we endure in that transcendental spirit with which Margaret Fuller accepted the larger universe. The hotel has been a palace of some importance: our bedroom is of the size and character of the stage of Covent Garden Theatre, when set for the last act of Othello. The gloomy majesty of the furniture is quite appalling; the two stupendous beds could easily accommodate the whole family of children at Orton House.

The first day we drove out into the neighboring country, where we found the same joyous harvest atmosphere we left in the Abruzzi. The town of Lucca is mellow with another harvest, the great art harvest of the renaissance; pictures and marbles that strike us fresh and strong from the dead hands that made them, not too familiar like the more famous works of Florence and Venice. We never before knew much of Matteo Civitalis, the statuary; he is now our loving friend for life. Fra Bartolomeo, the Lucca painter, we already knew, though not so intimately as now. We have put in some days of hard sightseeing. Did I say hard? no, splendid, soul inspiring. I feel as if I had put my lips to the fountain of life, and drawn deep draughts of inspiration. There are great churches, grim St. Romano and San Michele, the cathedral with its precious jewel, the tomb of Ilaria del Carretto, one of the most lovely monuments of the renaissance. As we lingered near the tomb the old sacristan approached; he eyed us anxiously before speaking.

“The signori are interested in sculpture?” We said that we were. “If their excellences have time, I will gladly show them what the church contains of interest to the amateur.”

How often he must have been snubbed and hurried by breathless tourists!

“A thousand thanks. We have come to Lucca partly to see the cathedral of St. Martino; figure to yourself if we have time!”

The withered old face broke up into the tenderest smile; it went to one’s heart that he should offer so timidly a service so precious. We spent the morning mousing about the church seeing all its treasures in the mellow glow of the old man’s enthusiasm.

“The illustrious ones have heard, perhaps, of a certain English writer who calls himself Ruskino?”

We said that we knew Ruskin’s books. He flushed with pleasure. “He was my friend; more than thirty times he visited Lucca, and he never came without making a sketch of the tomb of Ilaria.”

We go into the cathedral every day to look at Ilaria, where she sleeps in marble effigy, flower crowned, immortally young and lovely, just as Jacopo della Quercia, the sculptor, saw her, nearly five centuries ago. The tombs of Lucca remind one of the memorial tablets of the Street of Tombs in Athens. It is hard to say just where the resemblance lies; in form and manner there is little in common, the resemblance is of the subtler, deeper sort; a spiritual not a material likeness!

Palazzo Rusticucci, Rome, October 16, 1898.

We found our dear old palace very much as we had left it, save that Ignazio, the gardener, had suddenly, and without orders, added one hundred pots of flowers to the terrace. The difficulty and fatigue of watering this hanging garden of Babylon sometimes seems more than J. and I and Pompilia, our horticultural cook, can manage. Yet I cannot regret the addition which promises many new delights,—chrysanthemums among them. Pompilia asked many questions about what we had seen in our wanderings; she cannot forgive us for not having driven out to Bagni di Lucca! She tells me that she too is a great traveller.

“Sa, Signora mia, ho viaggiato per tutto il mondo. Da Lucca a Firenze, da Firenze a Lucca, da Lucca a Firenze, e poi a Roma! Know, mistress, that I have travelled all over the world, from Lucca to Florence” (the distance is about fifty miles), “from Florence to Lucca,” etc.

Our first visitor after our return to Rome was Sora Giulia, the dark-eyed Jewess who keeps an antiquarian’s shop in the Borgo Nuovo, a few doors away.

“Welcome home, Signora. I have brought you a few occasioni (bargains); a piece of lace, well, wait till you see it, un oggetto unico!”

Nena took Sora Giulia’s baby while the antiquarian untied her green damask bundle of old lace and linen.

“Behold, Signora mia, this priceless flounce. How well it would become you on a vesture of ceremony!”

She spread out with a caressing touch a deep lace flounce of Milan point. It was indeed “an unique object.” The sacred letters IHS and all the emblems of the Passion were wrought into it with wonderful freedom of design,—the ladder, the cross, the mallet, and so on. It had evidently been made for an ecclesiastic.

“It is truly a splendid piece of lace, Sora Giulia, but is it not known to you that such a flounce may only be worn by a sacerdote?”

“I preti sono poveri!”

“Not all priests are poor. Show it to Don Marcello.”

“Ma chè—, he buys no longer, he has to sell. But you, Signora, you are not like these others. Eh dica, lei è veramente Christiana? (Say, are you really a Christian?)”

Was not her eagerness not to have me a Christian pathetically significant? My mother remembers her Hebrew master, a scholarly Jew, taking hurried farewells of her in order to get back to the ghetto before the gates were shut at eight!

“I cannot buy this flounce. I could not wear it if I did.”

“Per carità, then look at this reticella.” (Literally “small net,” a coarse white netting with designs worked in by hand.) “The forestieri are mad about reticelle, they are buying them all up to make table-cloths and pillow covers. Soon it will be impossible to find them. I never saw a better piece, you shall have it at your own price. In confidence, the padrone di casa says if he is not paid his rent to-day he will turn us out. What a bad season we have had! No travellers since June. Those Florentine antiquarians put lies in the papers about there being plague or cholera, or some such porcheria in Rome, just to keep the voyagers away from us. We make nothing; but we must eat and pay our rent all the same! The padrone....”

“With respect, he is an infamous beast, they all are, Madonna mia!” Nena broke in. When she took Sora Giulia’s part I knew that the antiquarian was really in straits. We bought the reticella for the sum due the landlord, and Nena went downstairs to the baker’s shop to change the bill.

“Sora Nena will tell you that I speak the truth. That brute of a padrone extorted her rent yesterday, took her last centesimo. What is the result? I tell you, this morning Nena’s daughter had nothing to eat for her breakfast but one raw lemon. In consequence, the child at the breast has colic, which is not strange.”

“What about the child’s father?”

“He is a muratore (mason), but he gets no work. Sora Nena gives him to eat as well as his wife.”

Nena is a Venetian, and she takes snuff. She has other faults but I hear oftenest of these from the other servants. Before we went to Roccaraso I asked her if she had ever owned a silk dress. She laughed at the question; “silks were not for the likes of her,” etc. In parting I gave her a cast-off black satin, with rather peculiar wide stripes. The first Sunday after our return Pompilia went to mass in the satin dress, and poor pathetic little Nena in her old snuff-stained cotton gown. When I asked an explanation, she said that she had sold the satin to the cook: “Pompilia can afford to wear silk; I ask you, whom has she in the world belonging to her? Some cousins, who send her a basket of flowers on her festa! She puts every soldo she can scrape together on her back. Well, let that console her for being a zitella! “If you could have heard the spiteful hiss of her zitella (old maid). Nena has a daughter, an idle son-in-law, and seven grandchildren to support, but she pities Pompilia, who has only herself to think of!

“When the forestieri come, you will recommend me to them?” said Sora Giulia in parting. I can do so with a good conscience. If she guarantees a candlestick to be silver, you may be sure it is not merely plated. If a bargain is struck she will keep her side of it; as much cannot be said of all her Christian confrères among antiquarians.

It is strange how the antichità mania attacks people in Italy. Every one we know collects some manner of junk. A friend of J.’s who goes in for old coins was driving near Girgente, in Sicily, through the wildest, most primitive country. A peasant digging in a field offered him a handful of coins, moist with mud, just turned up with the spade.

They were all ancient Roman coins, copper or silver, familiar and not particularly valuable, with the exception of one rare Greek goldpiece which he bought for a large price. Afraid of being robbed, he took the next boat for Naples, pushed on to Rome, where he had been passing the winter, showed his treasure trove to an expert, and learned that there were but three others known to be in existence: one in Berlin, another in the British Museum, a third in a private collection. When he reached London, he showed his coin to the gentleman in charge of the collection at the British Museum. They compared it with the specimen in the case. The Girgente coin seemed as good a specimen; as a last test it was put under a powerful lens, which showed it to be a brand new imitation!

The Muse of Via Gregoriana, J. C., has a catholic taste and buys all manner of things from empire furniture to silver lamps. Her last craze is for peasant jewelry. She “acquires”—one does not buy antiquità—every piece she can lay her hands on. Some of the designs are excellent; the jewels are mostly flat rose diamonds, garnets, and misshapen pearls set in silver. Out of half a dozen odd earrings she will construct you a charming ornament, necklace, pendant, what not, and sell it to you at a small profit, which she devotes to helping young Roman musicians, several of whom owe their education to her. I call that a pleasant combination, to make your hobby carry your charity.

I believe Rome is the best place in Europe to buy jewels, because princes as well as peasants are continually throwing them on the market. One day our jeweller, Signor Poce (he lives in a little shop in the Corso, near the Piazza del Popolo), showed us a set of the finest emeralds I have seen in years. He said they belonged to some great lady who was obliged to part with them. That night we met those emeralds at a ball! they were in the shop again the next morning! Don’t be too sorry for the lady: she is a sensible English woman; and we happened to hear that she has lately redeemed a long-neglected estate belonging to her Roman husband, and is putting in modern improvements in the way of oil and wine presses. It is the same with the poorer people. What you read about the peasants parting with their precious possessions, furniture, laces, jewels, is true, but it is only part of the truth; they are selling them to buy better things—health and education! When you read about the heavy taxes, remember what they pay for! What Italy has done since 1870 is as wonderful as what France did in paying off the war debt to Germany out of the farmers’ stockings. Reading and writing are better than pearl earrings. The Tiber embankment, alone, cost the Romans a pretty penny. It spoiled the picturesqueness of the river—the sloping banks covered with trees and flowers must have been wonderful—and it did away with the Roman fever! The river used to overflow its banks every spring and to flood whole districts of the city. J. remembers boats rowed by sailors going

about the Piazza Rotonda and along the Via di Ripetta, carrying bread to the people in the submerged houses. When the river receded, “came the famine, came the fever.” When I was in Rome for the first time, as a girl, I had a bad case of old-fashioned Roman fever. Since my return, I have seen Suora Gabriella, the dear nun who nursed me so faithfully (she really saved my life) through that long dreadful illness. In speaking of the character of the work done by the nursing sisterhood to which she belongs, she said, “Since there is no more fever, the character of our work has changed somewhat; we now take surgical cases!” The doctors and hotel-keepers claim that Rome is the second healthiest city in Europe, having the lowest death rate after London. If this is true, we owe it to Garibaldi, for he it was who urged the Romans to build the Tiber embankment,—their best monument to his memory.

October 25, 1898.

This morning, Maria, the porter’s wife, was announced. She had come on “ambasciata” from the wife of the wine merchant opposite. “You remember the poor little gobbetto (hunch-back), Signora? the one who has brought you so much luck, since that day when you rubbed his hump?”

“I remember him, yes; what of him?”

“He is very ill; he suffers much, cannot sleep, cannot eat. One sees all his bones! His mother, poor woman, prays that you will ask the American Marchesa who lives at the Palazzo Giraud Torlonia to lend her carriage for the transportation of the santo bambino (the holy child) from the church of Santa Maria in Aracieli, to her house.”

“But why does she want the santo bambino at her house?”

“After that blessed image visits his bedside, the poor gobbetto will either recover or find repose in death. It is too terrible to see him suffer!”

“Is this thing which you tell me true?”

“It is most true, as you will see.”

I knew the poor crippled child, had one day taken him up in my arms. Maria, seeing me, had supposed I knew the superstition that it is lucky to touch the back of a gobbo.

“Will it be permitted to bring the bambino to the house?”

“If a carriage can be sent of the proper style—there must be one servant on the box and one to walk beside, there must be two horses; an ordinary hired carriage from the piazza will not do.”

“If the Marchesa consents?”

“The bambino, attended by two priests, will be brought to the gobbetto’s bedside. Then the thing will soon be over for the poor child—one way or the other!”

I went on the errand to my neighbor, Mrs. Haywood. (The Haywoods having a title from the Vatican, she is called Marchesa by the poor people of our quarter, but among her American friends she remains Mrs. Haywood.) She is a kind woman and an excellent neighbor. I found her at home in that splendid old Palazzo Giraud, built in 1503 (some say by the great architect Bramante), occupied by Cardinal Wolsey when he was papal legate. J.’s studio, by the way, is in one wing of this palace. Mrs. Haywood gave me tea in the library, one of the finest rooms in Rome. It has a balcony running around it, filled with rare books and manuscripts, for Mr. Haywood is a great bibliophile.

I told her my “ambasciata.” Though she was kindly sympathetic, she said “no” firmly, then explained. The Haywoods are the only people in the Borgo (outside the Vatican) who keep a carriage. When they first came to live here, they began by lending it whenever it was asked for, to bring the santo bambino to the sick. They soon found that, if they ever wished to use their carriage themselves, they must make a hard and fast rule to refuse all such requests. Knowing this, Maria and the gobbetto’s mother induced me to make the petition, on the chance that the Marchesa might grant to a compatriot what she would deny them. When it was found that my mission had failed, Maria, of the kind heart, opened a subscription to pay for the hire of a suitable carriage. Every member of our household, including Nena, has contributed to the fund. “Bisogna vivere a Roma coi costumi di Roma,” says the Italian proverb, “When you are in Rome do as Rome does!”

VIII

ROMAN CODGERS AND SOLITARIES

“Una presa di tabaco per Sora Nena (A pinch of snuff for Mrs. Nena),” she explained. Poor Nena, little withered old woman, the servants’ drudge, it doesn’t matter about her habits! Filomena, eighteen, rosy as Aurora,—so pretty that young men make excuses to call at our old green door to see her open it,—feared the shadow of suspicion that the snuff was for her own use! Snuff is still taken in Italy by the old and the old fashioned: it has the sanction of the clergy. In Rome, it is thought hardly seemly for a priest to smoke, they nearly all use snuff; indeed I have seen a priest take a sly pinch while officiating at the altar. Snuff is the only luxury our monk Antonio knows. Do you blame J. for sometimes keeping back a little of the money which we ought to give the frate for the general fund of the brotherhood, and investing it in a packet of snuff for the old fellow’s particular comfort? I do not.

“Frate,” I said, “why did you become a monk?”

“Signora, the Madonna herself bade me take the vows.”

“You lead a happy life at the monastery?”

“Like others I have my troubles, mainly rheumatism.” (His poor old veined feet looked cold in their sandals.)

“About those vows, now, how many are there?”

“They are three,” he counted them off on the knots of his rope girdle, “poverty, obedience, chastity. Circumstances might conceivably release me from the first and the second, but believe me, Signora,” he fixed an earnest, rheumy eye upon me as he said it, “not even the Holy Father himself could absolve me from the third vow.”

“S’intende (One understands),” Filomena assented.

J. says we women folk all make a great fuss over the frate; during the time old Santi (formerly the valet of Crawford père, ever since more or less dependent on the family) was with us the frate was rather snubbed. Santi, for many years the majordomo of a rich monsignore, scorned our dear Fra Antonio. He always forgot to serve the modest gift the old monk brought us every month, a head of barba di cappucini (capuchin’s beard) a sort of curly lettuce the monks raise in their garden. Santi was a character for you: he had an unctuous ecclesiastical manner suggestive of sacerdotal ceremonial. When he passed a plate of steaming fettuccie fatt’ in casa (ribbons made in the house, home-made macaroni) one was reminded of an acolyte handling a smoking censer. He was not with us long; though he was as handsome as a king, with the most distinguished manners, we were relieved to be rid of him; he who had served cardinals and princes of the Church seemed out of place waiting on our small table. I have recognized Santi’s sacerdotal manner in Cardinal Rampolla’s servants and in the attendants of other churchmen we have visited.

Cardinal Rampolla lives over there at the Vatican. The day we called on him we merely had to walk across the Square of St. Peter and knock at his door, as it were! We were astonished at being taken up to his apartment in an elevator—an elevator at the Vatican seems an anachronism! Living not a stone’s throw from the Vatican we are strangely aware of the mighty heart of the Catholic Church, and have grown sensitive to its pulsations, whether stirred by events at the Philippines or in the New York elections! Cardinal Rampolla is in constant attendance upon the Pope. A friend of ours once invited him to his villa outside Rome.

“It would rest your Eminence to get away for a few hours!” he urged.

“Aimè, magari potessi (If I only could)!” sighed the cardinal. Our friend says the sigh and look showed a depth of weariness he had never suspected in the dark energetic man at the helm. They say the cardinal has only slept outside the Vatican once since the day the Pope appointed him secretary of state years ago! That was on the night of his mother’s death; the next day he came back to the cold palace with its hundreds of rooms inhabited by four thousand men and not one woman or child. I often wonder about the dusting of those endless halls, chapels, and suites of apartments!

Do you suppose that vast hive of celibates is the magnet that draws to Rome its hoards of codgers and solitaries? I assure you their habits may be studied better here than anywhere in the world. Though many of the Roman codgers are more or less connected with the Vatican, there are scores who have no relations with it, Protestants, Greek Orthodox, Hebrews, and the like.

Rome must have been more picturesque when the Pope took his airing on the Pincio, instead of walking and driving inside the walls of the Vatican garden, as he does now. In those days the whole populace went down on their knees whenever he appeared. Then the cardinals wore their splendid vermilion robes every day: they must have made a joyful note of color in the landscape! Now they wear sad black gowns, save at a festa or some special function. Driving out into the Campagna on a fine afternoon, one is almost sure to pass a sober, closed carriage drawn by a pair of fat black horses, waiting by the roadside; a little farther on, one meets some cardinal walking with his secretary. It is not etiquette for a cardinal to walk in the streets of Rome while their head remains the Prisoner of the Vatican; they must drive about to do their errands, and get their airing outside the walls. Isn’t that fascinating? But in society the cardinals often wear their pretty bright robes.

At the Haywoods’ the other day, a cardinal came to tea; our host and hostess met him at the entrance, each carrying a lighted waxen torch. All the guests (except heretics like ourselves) courtesied, kotowed, and kissed his ring. It is not etiquette for a lady to be decolletée when a churchman is to be of the party. It is just these endless traditions—“links with the past”—which make Roman society to us shadowless-moneyed-above-board republicans so absorbingly interesting! Social life here is rich in shadows and lights, full of color and imagination; no wonder the novelists never tire of using it for a background.

Cardinal Hohenlohe, a true prince of the Church, keeps high state in the historic Villa d’Este, among his wonderful cypresses, fountains, terraces, and frescoed casinos. He surrounds himself with artists and musicians, pays little heed to any gentle hint from the Vatican, and is one of the most interesting persons one can see: his independence—he is said to be a Rosminian—is due to his position as well as to his character; he is of the Prussian royal family, cousin to the Emperor William, and is possessed of a free and liberal spirit not easy to control. The Hohenlohes are older than the Hohenzollerns, and a friend of the cardinal’s once said to a friend of mine, that his Eminence in a moment of wrath, for some reason or other, cried out: “Ugh! Hohenzollern! They once were considered highly honored with the post of holding the stirrup for the head of my house.” Was not that nice and spiteful?

The cardinal’s banishment from Tivoli was extremely diverting. Two English noblewomen of high rank, in Rome for the winter, wished to meet all the distinguished personages possible. A dinner was arranged for them by Baron Blanc, to which Cardinal Hohenlohe was invited. After all the other guests had assembled, the company was thrown into a flutter by the arrival of Crispi. Instead of Hohenlohe’s withdrawing (the usual etiquette when exalted Black and White personages meet by chance in society) they all went merrily in to dinner together. There were no end of toasts, Prince and Patriot pledged each other in Baron Blanc’s best wine. Mr. Stillman, who was of the company, remarked that it was pleasant to see Eminences and “Eccellenzas” drinking each other’s health. A neighbor at table whispered to the dauntless Stillman, “How imprudent you are!” (As if he was ever anything else!)

Other people were proved to have been imprudent. The next day the great prince cardinal was summoned to an interview with the Pope. What passed between them gossip does not say, but the cardinal packed his bag and left that afternoon for Perugia, where he passed three months in exile. Another imprudence of the cardinal’s was his lending the Villa d’Este for a political meeting in the campaign of Guido Baccelli (son of the famous physician) who was at that time running for parliament. The story of the poisoned figs used by Zola in his novel “Rome” was founded on a sad incident at the Villa d’Este. Some poisoned food meant for the cardinal was eaten by his steward, who died, I have been told, before his very eyes.[3]

Codgers, both clerical and lay, are usually shy; you must not let them know they are under observation if you hope to learn anything of their habits. In spite of this, they are distinctly social and gregarious, while the solitary lives and often dies alone. I asked one old gentleman codger—an American—who often drops in on his way to his browsing ground, the Vatican Library—what road first led him to Rome.

“The via vegetaria,” he said; “Rome has the finest vegetable market in the world.” He may be right, I certainly know no city where vegetables are so cheap, various, and good, but it seemed an odd reason for settling here.

“Artichokes,” he went on, “are no dearer than potatoes; as to finocchio, it is cheaper than bread.”

“Why could we not raise finocchio at home?” I asked.

“Wait till we grow poor and thrifty,” he said, “till we drink sheep’s milk, eat capretto (kid) and miscellaneous fungi; then we shall find the way to turn wild American fennel into domestic Italian finocchi.”

Finocchi is a root something like celery; it has the same crisp crunchiness, though it tastes rather like aniseed; the Romans eat it raw, we prefer it braised and served with black butter. Why not try to raise it in your garden? If you succeed in introducing a new vegetable, you will acquire merit in the eyes of every dinner-ordering wretch in the land. Fennel and kid. Two new dishes! There is a chance for you to reach every heart between Maine and Alaska!

Poor old Mr. X—— died the other day; I shall miss him dreadfully. He was the only snob variety of the genus codger in Rome; they are rare anywhere, the codger’s social aspect being generally mild and mildewed. I once asked him what had brought him to Rome (he came here twenty-five years ago with two marriageable daughters).

“The fact that it is respectable to be idle here, and that one finds the best society.” He said “the best society” in the sort of voice with which raw and crude converts mention the Madonna or one of what the Romans call i soliti santi (the same old saints). His daughter—she married Prince Q——, is a particularly nice woman; the comfort the old gentleman took in his grandchildren’s titles was pleasing to behold. At fifty he sat solidly down to enjoy the pleasures of “good society,” and the occupation of collecting engraved gems. That old law of compensation, you know, which makes some men after an idle youth leap with fiery ardor to embrace hard work, was reversed for him. Having grubbed all his youth he had the luck (it is rare) to find out how much fun there may be in play, after all!

I went to see the Princess Q—— soon after the old gentleman’s death. She told me something of his last days. “The night before my father died he made me promise for the twentieth time that I would send his body home. I asked him why he was so set on the idea. He rose right up in bed and said in a loud voice, ‘I can’t bear to think that on the last day I might rise from the dead along with these damned Italians!’”

Wasn’t that a death-bed revelation for you? The old man had been a New York newsboy, had gone West, made his pile in rum; then sunk the shop for good and all. He never talked about his early life, or where he came from; he bragged of his daughter’s fine acquaintances, of his son-in-law’s manners—but when his hour was come, he wished to lie in the consecrated ground of his native land!

Never shall I forget the only visit I ever received from the prince of solitaries, poor old Galli, the mad painter. He came in with his dauntless, threadbare air, made a sweeping bow, and paid me an elaborate compliment. His business, however, was plainly not with me.

“I have come, Signorino Jacca, to ask the favor of a few old clothes.”

He said it in such a spirited fashion that we felt the favor was conferred rather than asked. I wish I could make you see Galli! He has the hall mark of genius stamped upon him. Eyes like live coals, hair—when J. first remembers him blue-gray, now a rich silver—worn long, growing in masses with big waves, like the head of Zeus at the Vatican. He tries in every way to keep up the pace of his youth; instead of walking he shambles along at a funny bear’s trot; “having less time than I once had,” he said to J., “I cannot afford to walk slowly like some people of my age, so I am obliged to run.”

Galli is a Milanese, a descendant of those blond barbarians from the North, the Lunghe Barbe. There is something ardent and free about him, a starriness of the eyes, a breezy, untrammelled quality of mind which suggests some far-off Teutonic ancestor. Among the dead level of the people one meets, Galli stands out a marked man. As to the madness—was Ludwig of Bavaria really mad, or a poet born in the wrong place? Mad or sane, Galli is interesting: once you recognize that a man cannot be both ordinary and extraordinary, cannot possess common sense and uncommon sense, the vagaries of genius cease to annoy!

Whenever I hear the artists talking of Galli, I listen and try to remember what they say: some day his history must be written; the material will be found in the memories of people who knew him, not “in the files”; he is not one the journalists delight to honor.

No one seems to know Galli’s age. He might have been born in 1819—so many remarkable people were born that year that I often wonder if there is not something in astrology, after all. When he was young, Galli went to England with good letters of introduction. He was soon spoken of as a painter “with the right stuff in him—imagination, ideality, the artistic temperament,” all the rest of it. As he was a well-bred man, he had a social as well as an artistic success, and became a fashionable portrait painter. He played his little part in the fascinating drama of the London life of his day. It must have been a wonderful time, when all that was best in the English race came to the surface. Sympathy for Italy was at its height, the great scheme for the unification was growing silently and strongly. England, the mighty ally, was helping Italy prepare for the struggle. Looking back at the England of that day, one seems to see a whole army of Raleighs spreading their cloaks before the feet of the young Queen Victoria. All England seems to have shared in the youth, the hope, the courage of the Queen. With Galli, the romantic Italian, the universal enthusiasm became personal; he fell in love, not with the sovereign, but with the woman, which makes all the difference.

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?]