Chapter 32

I have (after careful consideration) committed a great imprudence, and escaped without hurt. I had myself carried down the stairs, drove to the Corso, saw the Carnival, and am back home again. I had thought first of driving up and down the Corso in a carriage, but did not care to be wholly smothered with confetti, especially as I had not the strength to pelt back. Nor could I afford to have the horses and carriage decorated. So I had a good seat in a first-floor balcony engaged for me, first row. At 3 o'clock I got up, dressed, and was carried down. I was much struck by the mild Summer air out of doors (about the same as our late May), and I enjoyed meeting the masked people in the streets we passed through. The few but rather steep stairs up to the balcony were a difficulty. But at last I was seated, and in spite of sickness and weakness, enjoyed the Carnival in Rome on its most brilliant day. I was sitting nearly opposite to the high box of Princess Margharita, from which there was not nearly so good a view as from my seat. This was what I saw: All the balconies bedecked with flags; red, white and green predominating. In the long, straight street, the crowd moving in a tight mass. In between them, an up and a down stream of carriages, drawn at a walking pace by two horses, and forced at every moment to stop. The streets re-echoed with the jingle of the horses' bells, and with shouts of glee at a magnificently decorated carriage, then at some unusually beautiful women, then at a brisk confetti fight between two carriages, or a carriage and a balcony. And this air, re-echoing with the ring of bells, with shouting, and with laughter, was no empty space. Anyone reaching the Corso, as I had done, after the play had only been going on for an hour and a half, found themselves in the midst of a positive bombardment of tiny little aniseed balls, or of larger plaster balls, thrown by hand, from little tin cornets, or half-bushel measures, and against which it is necessary to protect one's self by a steel wire mask before the face. For whilst some gentle young ladies almost pour the confetti down from their carriages, so that it falls like a soft shower of rain, many of the Romans fling it with such force that without a mask the eyes might suffer considerably. The brim of one's hat, and every fold in one's clothes, however, are full of little balls. Most people go about with a huge, full bag by their side, others on the balconies have immense baskets standing, which are hardly empty before they are re-filled by eager sellers. All the ladies standing in the windows, who were disguised as Turkish ladies, or workwomen from the port, had a deep wooden trough, quite full, brought outside their windows, and into this supply dipped continually--in the street, which had been covered with soil for the sake of the horse-racing, was a crowd of people in fancy dress, many of them having great fun, and being very amusing. One old woman in a chemise was amongst the best. A young fellow, dressed entirely in scarlet, more particularly amused himself by putting the officers of the National Guard, who were walking about to keep order, out of countenance. When they were looking especially stern, he would go up to them and tickle them on the cheeks, and talk baby talk to them, and they had to put the best face they could on it. The street life and the pedestrians, however, did not attract much attention. All the interest was centred on the carriages, and the games between them and the windows and balconies. The people in carriages were all in fancy dress. Amongst them one noticed charming groups of Roman ladies in light cloaks of red silk with a red steel wire mask before their faces, through which one could catch a glimpse of their features; there was a swarm of delightful figures, certainly half of them in men's clothes, armed young sailors, for instance. Fine, happy faces! And the young men, how handsome! Not flashing eyes, as people affectedly say, but happy eyes; a good, healthy physique, an expression which seemed to say that they had breathed in sunshine and happiness and all the beatitude of laziness, all the mild and good-humoured comfort of leisure, all their lives long. One party had a colossal cart with outriders and postilions, and hung in the yards and stood on the thwarts of a large cutter poised upon it, in becoming naval officers' dress, flinging magnificent bouquets to all the beautiful ladies who drove past. The bouquets would have cost several lire each, and they flung them by the hundred, so they must have been young fellows of means. The throwing of confetti is merely bellicose and ordinary. Infinitely more interesting is the coquettish, ingratiating, genuinely Italian flinging backwards and forwards of bouquets. The grace and charm of the manner in which they are flung and caught, nothing can surpass; there may be real passion in the way in which six or seven bouquets in succession are flung at one and the same lady, who never omits to repay in similar coin. One carriage was especially beautiful; it had a huge square erection upon it, entirely covered with artificial roses and greenery, which reached almost to the second storey of the houses, and upon it, in two rows, facing both sides of the streets, stood the loveliest Roman girls imaginable, flinging bouquets unceasingly. Most of the carriages have tall poles sticking up with a crossway bar at the top, and there are bouquets on every bar, so there is a constant supply to draw from. Beautiful Princess Margharita was, of course, the object of much homage, although her balcony was on the second floor. One form this took was very graceful. A few young gentlemen in blue and white drove slowly past; one of them had a large flat basket filled with lovely white roses; he stuck a long halberd through the handle and hoisted the basket up to the Princess, being richly rewarded with bouquets. One wag hit upon an idea that was a brilliant success. At five o'clock he sent a bladder, in the shape of a huge turkey, up in the flickering sunlight. It was so fixed up as to move its head about, with an expression of exceedingly ridiculous sentimentality, now to the right, now caressingly to the left, as it ascended. The whole Corso rang again with laughter and clapping. The horse-racing at the end was not of much account. The horses start excited by the rocket let off at their tails, and by all the sharp pellets hanging around about them, to say nothing of the howling of the crowd. At six o'clock I was at home and in bed.

K.B. has been here to see me; Filomena hates and despises him from the bottom of her heart since the day that he got drunk on my wine. When he was gone she said: "_Brutta bestia_, I forgot to look whether he was clean to-day." She and Maria declare that he is the only one of all my acquaintances who does not wear clean linen. This point of cleanliness is a mild obsession of Filomena's just now. She prides herself greatly on her cleanliness, and asks me every day whether she is clean or not. She is a new convert to cleanliness, and renegades or newly initiated people are in all religions the most violent. When I came to the house, her face was black and she washed her hands about once a day. R--- then remarked about her--which was a slight exaggeration--that if one were to set her up against the wall, she would stick fast. She noticed with unfeigned astonishment how many times I washed myself, and asked for fresh water, how often I had clean shirts, etc. This made a profound impression on her young mind, and after I came back from the hospital she began in earnest to rub her face with a sponge and to wash herself five or six times a day, likewise to wash the handkerchiefs she wears round her neck. Maria looks on at all this with surprise. She says, like the old woman in Tonietta, by Henrik Hertz: "A great, strong girl like that does not need to wash and splash herself all over like an Englishwoman." The lectures she has given me every time I have wanted to wash myself, on the harm water does an invalid, are many and precious. Whenever I ask for water I might be wanting to commit suicide; it is only after repeated requests that she brings it, and then with a quiet, resigned expression, as if to say: "I have done my best to prevent this imprudence: I wash my hands of all responsibility." Filomena, in her new phase of development, is quite different. She looks at my shirt with the eyes of a connoisseur, and says: "It will do for to-morrow; a clean one the day after to-morrow!" or, "Did you see what beautiful cuffs the tall, dark man (M. the painter) had on yesterday?" or, "Excuse my skirt being so marked now, I am going to have a clean one later in the day," or, "Is my cheek dirty? I don't think so, for I have washed myself twice to-day; you must remember that I am very dark-complexioned, almost like a Moor." Or else there will be a triumphal entry into my room, with a full water-can in her hand, one of the very large ones that are used here. "What is that, Filomena? What am I to do with that?" "Look, sir, it is full." "Well, what of that?" "It is the waiter's water-can; it has been standing there full for ten days (scornfully): he is afraid of water; he only uses it for his coffee." She has forgotten how few months it is since she herself was afraid of water.

She came in while I was eating my supper, and remarked: "You always read at your meals; how can you eat and read at the same time? I do not know what reading is like, but I thought it was more difficult than that. It is a great misfortune for me that I can neither read nor write. Supposing I were to be ill like you, how should I pass away the time! There was no school at Camarino, where I was born, and I lived in the country till I was eighteen, and learnt nothing at all. We were nine brothers and sisters; there was seldom any food in the house; sometimes we worked; sometimes we lay on the ground. It is unfortunate that I cannot read, for I am not at all beautiful; if I could only do something, I should be able to get a husband."

"Don't you know any of the letters, Filomena?"

"No, sir." "Don't trouble about that. You are happier than I, who know a great deal more than you. You laugh and sing all day long; I neither laugh nor sing." "Dear sir, you will laugh, and sing as well, when you get home. Then your little girl (_ragazza_) who is so _appassionato_ that she writes four letters a day, will make _fête_ for you, and I think that when you go to the _osteria_ with your friends you laugh. It is enough now for you to be patient." As she had spoken about getting a husband, I asked: "Are your sisters married?" "They are all older than I, and married." (Saving her pride in the first part of her reply.) After a few minutes' reflection she went on: "I, for my part, will not have a husband under thirty; the young ones all beat their wives." Shortly afterwards, I put an end to the audience. We had had a few short discussions, and I had been vanquished, apparently by her logic, but chiefly by reason of her better mastery of the language, and because I defended all sorts of things in joke. At last I said: "Have you noticed, Filomena, that when we argue it is always you who silence me? So you can see, in spite of all my reading, that you have better brains than I." This compliment pleased her; she blushed and smiled, without being able to find a reply.

She realises the Northern ideal of the young woman not spoilt by novel-reading. Nor does she lack intelligence, although she literally does not know what North and South mean; she is modest, refined in her way, and happy over very little. For the moment she is engaged in making the little dog bark like mad by aggravatingly imitating the mewing of a cat.

Later. The boy from the café brings me my supper. What has become of Filomena? I wonder if she is out? I cannot hear her having her evening fight with the boy in the passage. She likes to hit him once a day for exercise.

Maria comes in. "Do you hear the cannon, sir? What do you think it is?" I reply calmly: "It is war; the Zouaves (papal troops) are coming." Maria goes out and declares the reply of the oracle in the next room. Some cannon salutes really were being fired. Maria hurries down into the street to hear about it and Filomena comes in to me. "I am afraid," she says. "Do you mean it?" She was laughing and trembling at the same time. I saw that the fear was quite real. "Is it possible that you can be so afraid? There is not really any war or any Zouaves, it was only a joke." That pacified her. "I was afraid, if you like," said she, "when the Italians (the Romans never call themselves Italians) marched into Rome. One shell came after another; one burst on the roof of the house opposite." "Who are you for, the Pope or Vittorio?" "For neither. I am a stupid girl; I am for the one that will feed and clothe me. But I have often laughed at the Zouaves. One of them was standing here one day, taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and he said to me: 'The Italians will never enter Rome.' I replied: 'Not if they take snuff, but they will if they storm the town.'" "Do you think that the Pope will win?" "No, I think his cause is lost. Perhaps there will even come a time when no one goes to churches here." _She_: "Who goes to church! The girls to meet their lovers; the young men to see a pretty shop-girl. We laugh at the priests." "Why?" "Because they are ridiculous: if it thunders, they say at once that it is a sign from God. The sky happens to be flaming red, like it was last October. That was because the Italians entered Rome in September. Everything is a sign from God, a sign of his anger, his exasperation. He is not angry, that is clear enough. If he had not wanted the Italians to come in, they would not have come, but would all have died at once." She said this last with great earnestness and pathos, with an upward movement of her hand, and bowed her head, like one who fears an unknown power. Maria returned, saying people thought the shots meant that Garibaldi had come. Said I: "There, he is a brave man. Try to be like him, Filomena. It is not right for a big strong girl to tremble." _She_: "I am not strong, but still, I am stronger than you, who have been weakened so much by your illness,--and yet, who knows, you have been much better the last few days. Shall we try?" I placed my right hand in hers, first tested her strength a little, and then found to my surprise that her arm was not much stronger than that of an ordinary lady; then I bent my fingers a little, and laid her very neatly on the floor. I was sitting in bed; she was on her knees in front of the bed, but I let her spring up. It was a pretty sight; the blue-black hair, the laughing mouth with the fine, white teeth, the brown, smiling eyes. As she got up, she said: "You are well now; I am not sorry to have been conquered."

* * * * *

Have taken my second flight. I have been at the Moccoli fête, had myself carried and driven there and back, like last time. Saredo had taken a room on the Corso; I saw everything from there, and now I have the delightful impressions of it all left. What exuberant happiness! What jubilation! What childlike gaiety! It is like going into a nursery and watching the children play, hearing them shout and enjoy themselves like mad, as one can shout and enjoy things one's self no longer.

I arrived late and only saw the end of the processions; far more carriages, wilder shouting, more madness,--bacchantic, stormy,--than last time. The whole length of the Corso was one shriek of laughter. And how many lovely faces at the windows, on the balconies and verandas! Large closed carriages with hidden music inside and graceful ladies on the top. As _i preti_ (the Catholic papers) had said that all who took part in the Carnival were paid by the government, a number of men and women, in the handsomest carriages--according to the _Nuova Roma_ for to-day, more than 20,000--had the word _pagato_ (paid) fastened to their caps, which evoked much amusement. Then the lancers cleared the street at full galop for the horse races (_barberi_), and at once an immense procession of Polichinelli and ridiculous equestrians in Don Quixote armour organised itself and rode down the Corso at a trot in parody. Then came the mad, snorting horses. Then a few minutes,--and night fell over the seven heights of Rome, and the Corso itself lay in darkness. Then the first points of light began to make their appearance. Here below, one little shimmer of light, and up there another, and two there, and six here, and ten down there to the left, and hundreds on the right, and then thousands, and many, many thousands. From one end of the great long street to the other, from the first floor to the roof of every house and every palace, there is one steady twinkling of tiny flames, of torches, of large and small lights; the effect is surprising and peculiar. As soon as the first light appeared, young men and girls ran and tried to blow each other's candles out. Even the children took part in the game; I could see into several houses, where it was going on briskly. Then, from every side-street decorated carriages began to drive on to the Corso again, but this time every person held a candle in his hand. Yes, and that was not all! at least every other of the large waggons--they were like immense boxes of flowers--had, on poles, or made fast, Bengal fire of various colours, which lighted up every house they went past, now with a red, now with a green flare. And then the thousands of small candles, from every one in the throng, from carriages, balconies, verandas, sparkled in the great flame, fighting victoriously with the last glimmer of daylight. People ran like mad down the Corso and fanned out the lights in the carriages. But many a Roman beauty found a better way of lighting up her features without exposing herself to the risk of having her light put out. Opposite me, for instance, on the second floor, a lovely girl was standing in a window. In the shutter by her side she had fixed one of those violent red flares so that she stood in a bright light, like sunlight seen through red glass, and it was impossible not to notice her. Meanwhile, the people on the balconies held long poles in their hands, with which they unexpectedly put out the small candles in the carriages. You heard incessantly, through the confusion, the shouts of individuals one to another, and their jubilation when a long-attempted and cleverly foiled extinguishing was at length successful, and the clapping and shouts of _bravo!_ at an unusually brightly lighted and decorated carriage. The pickpockets meanwhile did splendid business; many of the Danes lost their money.

At eight o'clock I was in bed again, and shortly afterwards the people of the house came home for a moment. Filomena looked splendid, and was very talkative. "_Lei é ingrassato_," she called in through the door. It is her great pleasure that the hollows in my cheeks are gradually disappearing. She was now ascribing a special efficacy in this direction to Moccoli Eve.

* * * * *

At half-past ten in the morning, there is a curious spectacle in the street here. At that time Domenico comes and the lottery begins. Lotteries are forbidden in Rome, but Domenico earns his ten lire a day by them. He goes about this and the neighbouring streets bawling and shouting until he has disposed of his ninety tickets.

Girls and women lean out through the windows and call out the numbers they wish to have--in this respect they are boundlessly credulous. They do not believe in the Pope; but they believe that there are numbers which they must become possessed of that day, even at the highest price, which is two soldi. The soldi are thrown out through the window, and each one remembers her own number. Then Domenico goes through all the numbers in a loud voice, that there may be no cheating. A child draws a number out of the bag, and Domenico shouts: "Listen, all Purificazione, No. 34 has won, listen, Purificazione, 34 ... 34." The disappointed faces disappear into the houses. All those who have had 33, 35 and 36 rail against unjust Fate, in strong terms.

At the first rattle of the lottery bag, Filomena rushes in here, opens the window, and calls for a certain number. If anyone else wants it, she must manage to find two soldi in her pocket. If I fling a few soldi from my bed towards the window, this facilitates the search. However, we never win. Filomena declares that I have indescribable ill-luck in gambling, and suggests a reason.

* * * * *

She was again singing outside. I called her, wanting to know what it was she kept singing all the time. "They are songs from the mountains," she replied, "all _canzone d'amore_." "Say them slowly, Filomena. I will write them down." I began, but was so delighted at the way she repeated the verses, her excellent declamatory and rhythmic sense, that I was almost unable to write. And to my surprise, I discovered that they were all what we call ritornellos. But written down, they are dull larvae, compared with what they are with the proper pronunciation and expression. What is it Byron says?:

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin.

I shall really feel a void when Filomena goes away. The unfortunate part of it is that her dialect pronunciation is so difficult to make out, and that she swallows so many syllables in order to make the metre right, as there are generally too many feet, and it is only the delicacy of her declamation that makes up for the incorrectness of the rhymes and the verses. For instance, she constantly says _lo_ instead of _il_ (_lo soldato_), and she can never tell me how many words there are in a line, since neither she nor Maria knows what a single word, as opposed to several, is, and because it is no use spelling the word to her and asking: "Is that right?" since she cannot spell, and does not recognise the letters. Saredo tells me that a driver who once drove him and his wife about for five days in Tuscany sang all day long like Filomena, and improvised all the time. This is what she, too, does continually; she inserts different words which have about the same meaning, and says: "It is all the same" (_c'è la stessa cosa_). On the other hand, she always keeps to the metre, and that with the most graceful intonation; never a faulty verse:

Fior di giacinto! La donna che per l'uomo piange tanto-- Il pianto delle donne è pianto finto.

Amore mio! Non prendite le fiori di nessuno, Se vuoi un garofletto, lo do io.

Fior di limone! Limone è agra, e le fronde son' amare, Ma son' più' amare le pene d'amor'.

Lo mi' amore che si chiama Peppe, Lo primo giuocatore delle carte Prende 'sto cuore e giuoca a tre-sette.

[Footnote:

Flower of the hyacinth! The woman who weeps so much for the man's sake-- Yet, the complaint of women is a feigned one.

My love! Do not accept flowers from anyone. If thou wilt have a wall-flower, I will give it thee.

Flower of the lemon! The lemon is sharp, and its leaves are bitter; But more bitter are the torments of love.

My beloved, whose name is Peppe, He is the first to play cards, He has taken this heart and is playing a game of Three to Seven with it.]

In this way I wrote out some scores.

* * * * *