Part 6

Now if there is anything which Janet especially cherishes, it is her pretty boots; so Castel d'Appio remained unvisited upon its height, in lonely majesty against the sky. The next object of interest was a square tower, standing on the side-hill not far above the road; it was not large on the ground, rather was it narrow, but it rose in the air to an imposing height. I could not imagine what its use had been: it stood too far from the sea for a lookout, and, from its shape, could hardly have been a residence; in its isolation, not a fortress. Inness said it looked like a steeple with the church blown away; and then, inspired by his own comparison, he began to chant an ancient ditty about

"'The next thing they saw was a barn on a hill: One said 'twas a barn; The other said "Na-ay;" And t'other 'twas a church with its steeple blown away: Look--a--there!'"

This extremely venerable ballad delighted Miss Graves in the carriage behind so that she waved her black parasol in applause. She asked if Inness could not sing "Springfield Mountain."

"There is nothing left now," I said, laughing, "but the 'Battle of the Nile.'"

Verney, who had sketched the tower early in the winter, explained that the old road to Ventimiglia passed directly through the lower story, which was built in the shape of an arch. All the carriages were now together, as we gazed at the relic.

"The road goes through?" said Miss Graves. "Probably, then, it was a toll-gate."

This was so probable, although unromantic, that thereafter the venerable structure was called by that name, or, as Inness suggested, "not to be too disrespectful, the mediaeval T.G."

Ventimiglia, seven miles from Mentone, was "one of the most ancient towns in Liguria," the Professor remarked. Mrs. Trescott, Mrs. Clary, and I looked much wiser after this information, but carefully abstained from saying anything to each other of the cloudy nature of our ideas respecting the geographical word. However, we noticed, unaided, that its fortifications were extensive, for we rolled over a drawbridge to enter it, passing high stone-walls, bastions, and port-holes, while on the summit of the hill above us frowned a large Italian fort. The Roya, a broad river which divides the town into two parts, is crossed by a long bridge; and we were over this bridge and some distance beyond before we discovered that we had left the old quarter on the other side, its closely clustering roofs and spires having risen so directly over our heads on the steep side-hill that we had not observed them. Should we go back? The carriages drew up to consider. We had still "a long drive before us;" these "old Riviera villages" were "all alike;" the hill seemed "very steep;" and "we can come here, you know, at any time"--were some of the opinions given. The Professor, who really wished to stop, gallantly yielded. Miss Graves, alone in the opposition, was obliged to yield also; but she was deeply disappointed. The cathedral, formerly dedicated to Jupiter, "'possesses a white marble pulpit incrusted with mosaics, and an octagon font, very ancient,'" she read, mournfully, aloud, from her manuscript note-book. "'The Church of St. Michael, also, guards Roman antiquities of surpassing interest.'" This word "guards" had a fine effect.

But, "we can come here at any time, you know," carried the day; and we drove on. I may as well mention that, as usual in such cases, we never did "come here at any time," save on the one occasion of our departure for Florence--an occasion which no railway traveller going to Italy by this route is likely soon to forget, the Ventimiglia custom-house being modelled patriotically upon the circles of Dante's "Inferno."

When we were at a safe distance--"I suppose you know, Miss Trescott, that Ventimiglia was the principal home of your Lascaris?" said Verney. "First of all, they were Counts of Ventimiglia: that Italian port stands on the site of their old castle. I have been looking into their genealogy a little on your account; and I find that the first count of whom we have authentic record was a son of the King of Italy, A.D. 950. His son married the Princess Eudoxie, daughter of Theodore Lascaris, Emperor of Greece, and assumed the arms and name of his wife's family. Their descendants, besides being Counts of Ventimiglia, became Seigniors of Mentone, Castellare, Gorbio, Peille, Tende, and Briga, Roccabruna, and what is now L'Annunziata. They also had a chateau at Nice."

"Let us go back!" said Janet.

"To Nice?" I asked, smiling.

But Verney appeased her with an offering--nothing less than a sketch he had made. "The Lascaris," he said, as if introducing them. And there they were, indeed, a group of knights on horseback, dressed in velvet doublets and lace ruffles, with long white plumes, followed by a train of pages and squires with armor and led-horses. All had Greek profiles: in truth, they were but various views of the Apollo Belvedere. This splendid party was crossing the drawbridge of a castle, and, from a latticed casement above, two beautiful and equally Greek ladies, attired in ermine, with long veils and golden crowns, waved their scarfs in token of adieu.

"Charming!" said Janet, much pleased. (And in truth it was, if fanciful, a very pretty sketch.) "But who are those ladies above?"

"I suppose they had wives and sisters, did they not?" said Verney.

"I suppose they did--of _some_ sort," said Janet, disparagingly.

But Verney now produced a second sketch; "another study of the same subject," he called it. This was a picture of the same number of men, clad in clumsy armor, with rough, coarse faces, attacking a pass and compelling two miserable frightened peasants with loaded mules to yield up what they had, while, from a rude tower above, like our mediaeval T. G., two or three swarthy women with children were watching the scene. The wrappings of the two sketches being now removed, we saw that one was labelled, "The Lascaris--her Idea of them;" and the other, "The Lascaris--as they were."

We all laughed. But I think Janet was not quite pleased. After the next change Verney found himself, by some mysterious chance, left to occupy the seat beside Miss Elaine, while Baker had his former place.

The Nervia, a clear rapid little snow-formed river, ran briskly down over its pebbles towards the sea. Our road followed the western bank, and before long brought us to Campo Rosso, a little village with a picturesque belfry, a church whose facade was decorated with old frescos, two marble sirens spouting water, and numberless "bits" in the way of vistas through narrow arched passages and crooked streets, which are the delight of artists. But Campo Rosso was not our destination, and entering the carriage again, we went onward through an olive wood whose broad terraces extended above, below, and on all sides as far as eye could reach. When we had stopped wondering over its endlessness, and had grown accustomed to the gray light, suddenly we came out under the open sky again, with Dolce Acqua before us, its castle above, its church tower below, and, far beyond, our first view of snow-capped peaks rising high and silvery against the deep blue sky. Inness and Baker threw up their hats and saluted the snow with an American hurrah. "What with those white peaks and this Italian sky, I feel like the Merry Swiss Boy and the Marble Faun rolled into one," said Baker.

We drove up to the Locanda Desiderio, or "Desired Inn," as Inness translated it. It was now noon, and in the brick-floored apartment below a number of peasants were eating sour bread and drinking wine. But the host, a handsome young Italian, hastened to show us an upper chamber, where, with the warm sunshine flooding through the open windows across the bare floor, we spread our luncheon on a table covered with coarse but snowy homespun, and decked with remarkable plates in brilliant hues and still more brilliant designs. The luncheon was accompanied by several bottles of "the good little white wine" of the neighborhood--an accompaniment we had learned to appreciate.

Upon the chimney-piece of a room adjoining ours, whose door stood open, there was an old brass lamp. In shape it was not unlike a high candlestick crowned with an oval reservoir for oil, which had three little curving tubes for wicks, and an upright handle above ending in a ring; it was about a foot and a half high, and from it hung three brass chains holding a brass lamp-scissors and little brass extinguishers. Mrs. Clary, Mrs. Trescott, Miss Graves, Miss Elaine, and myself all admired this lamp as we strolled about the rooms after luncheon before starting for the castle. It happened that Janet was not there; she had gone, by an unusual chance, with Lloyd, to look at some cinque-cento frescos in an old church somewhere, and was, I have no doubt, deeply interested in them. When she returned she too spied the old lamp, and admired it. "I wish I had it for my own room at home," she exclaimed. "I feel sure it is Aladdin's."

"Come, come, Janet," called Mrs. Trescott from below. "The castle waits."

"It has waited some time already," said Inness--"a matter of six or seven centuries, I believe."

"And looks as though it would wait six or seven more," I said, as we stood on the arched bridge admiring the massive walls above.

"It has withstood numerous attacks," said the Professor. "Genoese armies came up this valley more than once to take it, and went back unsuccessful."

"To me it is more especially distinguished by _not_ having been a home of the Lascaris," said Baker.

"To whom, then, did it belong?" said Janet, contemptuously.

We all, in a chorus, answered grandly, "To the Dorias!" (We were so glad to have reached a name we knew.)

The castle crowned the summit of a crag, ruined but imposing; in shape a parallelogram, it had in front square towers, five stories in height, pierced with round-arched windows. It was the finest as well as largest ruin we lately landed Americans had seen, and we went hither and thither with much animation, telling each other all we knew, and much that we did not know, about ruined towers, square towers, drawbridges, moats, donjon keeps, and the like; while Miss Elaine, who had placed herself beside Verney on the knoll where he was sketching, looked on in a kindly patronizing way, as much as to say: "Enjoy yourselves, primitive children of the New World. We of England are familiar with ruins."

Margaret and Lloyd found a seat in one of the ruined windows of the south tower; I stood beside them for a few moments looking at the view. On the north the narrow valley curved and went onward, while over its dark near green rose the glittering snowy peaks so far away. In the south, the blue of the Mediterranean stretched across the mouth of the valley, whose sides were bold and high; the little river gleamed out in spots of silver here and there, and the white belfry of Campo Rosso rose picturesquely against the dark olive forest. Directly under us were the roofs of the village, and the old stone bridge of one high arch. "Do you notice that many of these roofs are flat, with benches, and pots of flowers?" said Lloyd. "You do not see that in Mentone. It is thoroughly Italian."

Janet, Mrs. Trescott, Inness, Baker, and the Professor were up on the highest point of the crag, where the Professor was giving a succinct account of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. His words floated down to us, but to which of those celebrated and eternally quarrelling factions these Dorias belong I regret to say I cannot now remember. But it was evident that he was talking eloquently, and Inness, who was quite distanced, by way of diversion threw pebbles at the north tower.

We came down from the castle after a while, and strolled through the village streets--all of us save Margaret and Lloyd, who remained sitting in their window. Mrs. Trescott, seeing a vaulted entrance, stopped to examine it, and the broad doors being partly open, she peeped within. As there was more vaulting and no one to forbid, she stepped into the old hall, and we all followed her. We were looking at the massive, finely proportioned stairway, when a little girl appeared above gazing down curiously. She was a pretty child of seven or eight, and held some little thumbed school-books under her arm.

"Is this a school?" asked Verney, in Italian.

She nodded shyly, and ran away, but soon returned accompanied by a Sister, or nun, who, with a mixture of politeness and timidity, asked if we wished to see their schools. Of course we wished to see everything, and going up the broad stairway, we were ushered into an unexpected and remarkable apartment.

"We came to see an infant school, and we find a row of noblemen," said Baker. "They must be all the Dorias upon their native heath!"

The "heath" was the wall, upon which, in black frames, were ranged forty-two portraits in a long procession going around three sides of the great room, which must have been fifty feet in length. At the head of the apartment was a picture seven feet square, representing a full-blooming lady in a long-bodied white satin dress, with an extraordinary structure of plumes and pearls on her head, accompanied by a stately little heir in a pink satin court suit, and several younger children. One grim, dark old man in red, farther down the hall, was "Roberto: Seigneur Dolce Acqua. Anno 1270." A dame in yellow brocade, with hoop, ruff, and jewels, and a little curly dog under her arm, was "Brigida: Domina Dolce Acqua. 1290."

"So they carried dogs in that way then as well as now," observed Janet.

The Mother Superior now came in. She informed us that this was the chateau of the Dorias, built after their castle was destroyed, and occupied by descendants of the family until a comparatively recent period. Its plain exterior, extending across one end of the little square, we had not especially distinguished from the other buildings which joined it, forming the usual continuous wall of the Riviera towns. The chateau was now a convent and school. There were benches across one side of the large apartment where the village children were already assembled under the black-framed portraits, but there was not much studying that day, I think, save a study of strangers.

"Here is the real treasure," said Verney.

It was a chimney-piece of stone, extending across one end of the room, richly carved with various devices in relief, figures, and ornaments, and a row of heads on shields across the front, now the profile of an old bearded man looking out, and now that of a youth in armor. It was fifteen feet high, and a remarkably fine piece of work.

"Quite thrown away here," said Miss Graves.

"Oh, I don't know; the portraits can see it," replied Janet.

The Mother Superior conducted us all over the chateau, reserving only the corridor where were her own and the Sisters' apartments. The dignified stone stairway with its broad stone steps extended unchanged to the top of the house.

"In the matter of stairways," I said, "I must acknowledge that our New World ideas are deficient. We have spacious rooms, broad windows, high ceilings, but such a stairway as this is beyond us."

The empty sunny rooms above were gayly painted in fresco. At one end of the house a door opened into a little latticed balcony, into which we stepped, finding ourselves in an adjoining church, high up on the wall at one side of the altar. Here the Sisters came to pray, and as we departed, one of them glided in and knelt down in the dusky corner.

"Perhaps she is going to pray for us," said Inness.

"I am sure we need it," replied Janet, seriously.

In the garret was a Sedan-chair, once elaborately gilded.

"I suppose they went down to Ventimiglia in that," said Baker--"those fine old dames below."

From one of the rooms on the second floor opened a little cell or closet, part of whose flooring had been removed, showing a hollow space beneath following the massive exterior wall.

"Here," said the Mother Superior, "the papers of the family were concealed at the approach of the first Napoleon, and not taken out for a number of years. The flooring has never been replaced."

The Mother Superior spoke only Italian, which Verney translated, much to the envy of the younger men. The Professor was not with us, for as soon as he learned that the place was "papist" he departed, although Inness suggested that the street was papist also, and likewise the very air must be redolent of Rome. But the Professor was an example of "coelum, non animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt," and quite determined to be as Protestant in Italy as he was in Connecticut. He would not desert his colors because under a foreign sky, as so many Americans desert them.

The Mother now conducted us to a little square parlor, with south windows opening upon a balcony full of pots of flowers; the walls and ceiling of this little room were glowing with color--paintings in fresco more suited to the Dorias, I fancy, than to the "Sisters of the Snow," for this was the poetical name of the little black-robed band. In this worldly little room we found wine waiting for us, and grapes which were almost raisins: we had never seen them in transition before. The wine was excellent, and Mrs. Trescott partook with much graciousness. After partaking, she employed Verney in translating to the Mother a number of her own characteristic sentences. But Verney must have altered them somewhat en route, for I hardly think the Mother would have remained so calmly placid if she had comprehended that "this whole scene--the grapes, the wine, and the frescos"--reminded Mrs. Trescott of "Cleopatra, and of Sardanapalus and his golden flagons." Presently two of the Sisters entered with coffee which they had prepared for us; after serving it, they retired to a corner, where they stood gently regarding us. Then another entered, and then another, unobtrusively taking their places beside the others. It was interesting to notice the simplicity of their mild gaze; although brown and middle-aged, their expression was like that of little children. When they learned that some of us were from America they were much impressed, and looked at each other silently.

"I suppose it does not seem to them but a little while since Columbus discovered us," said Baker.

At last it was time for us to go: we bade the little group farewell, and left some coins "for their poor."

"Though we may not meet on earth, we shall see you all again in heaven," said the Mother, and all the Sisters bowed assent. They accompanied us down to the outer door, and waved their hands in adieu as we crossed the little square. When, at the other side, we turned to look back, we saw their black skirts retiring up the stairway to their little school.

"Farewell, Sisters of the Snow," said Janet. "May we all so live as to keep that rendezvous you have given us!"

The carriages were now ordered, and Margaret and Lloyd summoned from the castle tower. We were standing at the door of the Desired Inn, collecting our baskets and wraps, when the Professor appeared with a long narrow parcel in his hand. This he stowed away carefully in one of the carriages, changing its position several times, as if anxious it should be carried safely. While he was thus engaged in his absorbed, near-sighted way, Inness came down the stone stairs from the upper chamber, and going across to Janet, who was leaning on the parapet looking at the river, he was on the point of presenting something to her, when his little speech was stopped by the appearance of Baker coming around the corner from the front of the house, with a parcel exactly like his own.

"Two!" cried Inness, bursting into a peal of laughter; and then we saw, as he tore off the paper, that he had the old brass lamp which Janet had admired. Meanwhile Baker had another, the Desired Inn having been evidently equal to the occasion, and to driving a good bargain. Our laughter aroused the Professor, who turned and gazed at our group from the step of the carriage. But having no idea of losing the credit of his unusual gallantry simply because some one else had had the same thought, he now extracted his own parcel and silently extended it.

"A third!" cried Inness. And then we all gave way again.

"I am so much obliged to you," said Janet, sweetly, when there was a pause, "but I am sorry you took the trouble. Because--because Mr. Verney has already kindly given me one, which is packed in one of the baskets."

At this we laughed again, more irresistibly than before--all, I mean, save Miss Elaine, who merely said, in the most unamused voice, "How _very_ amusing!" As we had all admired the ancient lamp (although no one thought of offering it to _us_), the superfluous gifts easily found places among us, and were not the less thankfully received because obtained in that roundabout way.

We now left the "Sweet Waters" behind us, and went down the valley towards the sea.

"There is another town as picturesque as Dolce Acqua some miles farther up the valley," said Verney. "I have a sketch of it. It is called Pigna."

"Oh, let us go there!" said Janet.

"We cannot, my daughter, spend the entire remainder of our earthly existence among the Maritime Alps," said Mrs. Trescott.

Inness had the place beside Janet all the way home.

On the Cornice, a few miles from Mentone, we came upon a boy and girl sitting by the road-side; they had a flageolet and a sort of bagpipe, and wore the costume of Italian peasants, their foot-coverings being the complicated bands and strings which are, in American eyes (the strings transmuted into ribbons), indelibly associated with bandits. "They are pifferari," said Verney; and we stopped the carriages and asked them to play for us. The boy played on his flageolet, and the girl sang. As she stood beside us in the dust, her brown hands clasped before her, her great dark eyes never once stopped gazing at Janet, who, clad that day in a soft cream-white walking costume, with gloves, round hat, and plume of the same tint, looked not unlike a lily on its stem. The Italian girl was of nearly the same age in years, and of fully the same age in womanhood, and it seemed as if she could not remove her fascinated gaze from the fair white stranger. Inness and Verney both tried to attract her attention; but the boy gathered up the coins they dropped, and the girl gazed on. As the Professor was tired, and did not care for music, we drove onward; but, as far as we could see, the Italian girl still stood in the centre of the road, gazing after the carriages.

"What do you suppose is in her mind?" I said. "Envy?"

"Hardly," said Verney. "To her, probably, Miss Trescott is like a being from another world--a saint or Madonna."

"Ah, Mr. Verney, what exaggerated comparisons!" said Miss Elaine, in soft reproach. "Besides, it is irreligious, and you _promised_ me you would not be irreligious."

Verney looked somewhat aghast at this revelation, of course overheard by Mrs. Clary and myself. It was rather hard upon him to have his misdeeds brought up in this way--the little sentimental speeches he had made to Miss Elaine in the remote past--i.e., before Janet arrived. But he was obliged to bear it.

* * * * *

"I suppose," said Inness, one morning, "that you are not all going away from Mentone without even _seeing_ Mon--Monaco?"

"It can be _seen_ from Turbia," answered the Professor, grimly. "And that view is near enough."

Inness made a grimace, and the subject was dropped. But it ended in our seeing Turbia from Monaco, and not Monaco from Turbia.