Part 16

At this hectic moment the proud young porter came hurrying along the _vicolo_, buttoning his gold-laced coat as he ran. He took in the situation at a glance, and with the exquisite tact of his people went bail for the _pittore Inglese_ without seeming to do so.

“Is there anything I can do for you in the studio, Signore, before their excellencies arrive?” he asked.

“You know this gentleman?” demanded the _guardia_ suspiciously.

“Know him! I have known him all my life! It is the gentleman who occupies the studio in the rear of the palace.”

“A thousand pardons, Signore,” said the _guardia_, with a magnificent military salute. J. had to thank the porter for not having been detained as “a suspicious person” during the time of the Queen’s visit to his studio.

A minute or two before the appointed hour we all went down into the vestibule. There was an odd hushed feeling in the street: a watering cart had just passed, the square gray cobble-stones were still wet, the air moist. Pietro had found time to pull up the weeds and grass from the pavement (worn into ruts by centuries of cart-wheels) in front of our door, and to clear away the bits of water-melon rind which the boys of the Borgo use as roller skates, in a game that I believe is indigenous to our quarter. Just as the bells of the Castle Sant’ Angelo were ringing six, we heard the jingling of chains and the sound of tramping horses. We were all on the sidewalk as the carriage with the scarlet liveries drew up before the studio. The proud young porter, his hand on the knob of the studio door, made the most sumptuous bow as the footman opened the door of the landeau. Lord Curry handed out the Queen,

presented J., then gave her his arm and led her up the dreadful long stair. Her lady in waiting, the Duchess Massimo, and the gentleman of the court in attendance, followed, looking aghast and rather scornful at the queer steps; but the royal lady never flinched; she walked up the stairway with as gay and light a step as if she were treading the red carpet of the Quirinale. Once in the studio one lost sight of the royal personage in the _connoisseur_, the lover and patron of art. It is no wonder that the artists look upon her as their friend. To her art is one of the serious concerns of life, one of the matters which it is her duty as a sovereign, as the mother of her people, to foster by every means in her power.

She looked at the decoration from every point of view, asked many questions about its destination. She knew of the Boston Public Library, and said many pleasant things of it, and of J.’s ceiling for it. She liked the funny old studio, with its big fireplace, its enormous window, and explored it with the fresh curiosity of a young girl. She asked what this and what that picture was, insisted on being shown canvases that stood with their faces to the wall. J.’s drawing of Dante and the death mask from which it was made interested her deeply; she is evidently a student of the divine poet. The portrait of the Duke of Cambridge which J. made last spring was standing on an easel. She laughed heartily when she saw it, and said, “It is so exactly like the old man that it makes me laugh.”

They stayed half an hour. Part of that time the Queen sat in the old Portuguese leather chair which our own dear mother queen always sat in when she was with us. As they went away, the Duchess Massimo said to me, “I assure you the Queen has been much interested and much pleased.”

We all went down to the carriage; the Borgo was one compact mass of people. We watched the carriage drive away, caught the sweet parting smile of our lovely visitor, and then went back to the studio to talk it all over. In a few minutes two of our best friends turned up. They had come over by chance to have tea at the studio, and had received quite a sensation at seeing the royal carriage with the scarlet liveries standing before the shabby old green door and the Borgo crammed with the Roman populace.

July 16, 1900.

Saturday evening as we sat at dinner another messenger from the Casa Reale was announced. He brought a letter from the Countess Villamarina, the Queen’s maid of honor, to J., in which she begged to send him, in the name of her “august sovereign,” the accompanying jewel for his wife, in memory of her visit to the studio. The jewel is a medallion of dark blue enamel, with M., the Queen’s initial, in diamonds, with a royal crown above it. On the reverse are the arms of Savoy, the red cross on the white field, the whole surrounded by a hoop of diamonds hanging from a bar of diamonds, set as a brooch, and very elegant.

J. says that we cannot afford to stay in the Borgo if we remain in Rome, we must move to a new quarter. Ever since the Queen’s visit, the _gobbo_, our favorite cabby, has called him Signor Marchese, and expects a larger _mancia_ than he can afford to give.

XIV

STRAWBERRIES OF NEMI

LAKE OF NEMI, July 8, 1900.

The _fruttajola_ of the Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, and the waiter of the Café di Roma are responsible for our coming to Nemi. I like to linger chaffering in the _fruttajola’s_ shop (at this season it smells of strawberries and apricots) not only because she has the best fruit in Rome but because she has three of the prettiest daughters--the youngest looks as the Fornarina, the baker’s daughter beloved of Raphael, might have looked. When the _fruttajola_ was young she must have been even handsomer than her daughters, though their cheeks seem like duplicates of the peaches and nectarines they handle so daintily; she has an intensity of expression, a look of power that none of her girls have.

“You tell me these strawberries are from Nemi,” I said; “how is that possible? For the past month you have sold me strawberries from Nemi, always from Nemi! All over Rome I see the strawberries of Nemi advertised. Is it likely now that a little town like Nemi can supply such a great city as Rome with strawberries all these many weeks?”

You see I remembered what the Tuscan wine grower said to us about the wine of Chianti. The _fruttajola_ tossed her handsome head. “Signora, you have but to see Nemi to understand!” she said, laying on the counter a little blue paper box she had been making and lining with grape leaves as she talked and which she now filled with purple figs and yellow _nespole_. That night, wishing to give our servants “an evening off,” we dined at the Café di Roma. Of course we had the inevitable dishes of this season, chicken, hunter’s fashion (braised, with green peppers), salad of tomato and endive, finishing off with strawberries from Nemi, and of course the cream was too thin. J. asked Leandro, the waiter who always serves us, if it was not possible to get better cream. He has often asked the same question before.

“Signore,” said Leandro, “this cream comes from the dairy next door. We always order the best for you, and this is what they send us. Why do you not yourself step in and speak to the proprietor? He will take more pains for you than for me.” Pricked by memories of Jersey cream which those ravishing strawberries evoked, J. sought the _padrone_ of the dairy.

“Is it not possible to have thicker cream than that you send to the restaurant?” he asked. The man looked surprised. “The Signore desires thicker cream? Why, of course, it is possible to have the cream as thick as he wishes, only have a moment’s patience.” As he spoke the _padrone_ took up a fine hair sieve, put into it a lump of some soft white stuff which he mashed with a big spoon into a paste; this he passed through the sieve, every now and then letting a few drops fall out of the spoon to show how thick the cream had become.

“Is that thick enough, Signore?” he finally asked.

“Quite thick enough, thank you,” said poor J. grimly. “Will you do me the favor of telling me what you use to thicken the cream?”

“But surely! Various things are used; the best is this that you see, the brains of a young calf nicely boiled.”

When J. came back to the restaurant he said that, on the whole, he preferred his strawberries with wine and sugar, as the Romans eat them. The waiter pushed a flask hung on a swivel towards him; J. drowned his plate in a flood of red Genzano. Isn’t it odd that in Roman restaurants wine is sold by weight? Leandro weighed the flask before putting it on the table, and again when he took it off after dinner.

In order to make conversation I said, “Leandro, do you know where these strawberries really come from?”

“Do I know? They are from my own town, it may be from our own land! the proprietor of this restaurant buys oil, fruit, and wine of my uncle, who lives at Nemi. I myself have a little property at Nemi. The oil the Signora had of me came from there. Ah! you should see Nemi, you should eat the strawberries fresh from the vines.”

That settled it; we had been promising ourselves a little Fourth of July outing somewhere in the country, so the next day we took the train for Albano and drove over to Nemi, where we are decently settled at the Trattoria Desanctis.

Nemi is an enchanting little mediæval town perched high above the edge of the Lake of Nemi called by the ancients the Mirror of Diana. Sitting in the terraced garden of the old castle of the Orsini, near our inn, you look down the steep sides of the crater of an extinct volcano, over three hundred feet, to the lake, a big sparkling sapphire, three miles in circumference, lying at the bottom of a green enamelled cup. There is no soil in the world, the landlord says, quite as rich as this volcanic soil. Every inch of the land is highly cultivated, and here, _here_ on the sloping sides of the old volcano grow the wild and the tame strawberries of Nemi. I trust it is not necessary to tell you that the wild ones are by far the best. We clambered down a steep path jewelled with wild flowers to the very edge of Diana’s mirror. I dipped my hand in the clear cold water. It is hard to realize that where this gemlike lake now sparkles in the sunlight there was once a pit of fire, that the sides where the pleasant strawberries grow were once coated with a velvet bloom of sulphur like the crater of Vesuvius. We turned and looked up the slope; a breeze ruffled the green leaves and exposed the vines beneath, laden with myriads of strawberries, red as rubies. As the _fruttajola_ foretold, I now understand how the little town of Nemi supplies the big city of Rome with strawberries.

The lake is more than one hundred feet deep and is drained by an artificial emissarium--ancient Roman, of course. The peasants say that the lake has no bottom. As there is a sort of whirlpool in the middle from the suction of the water into the emissarium, it is considered unsafe for boating or bathing. There is a story of a mad Englishman who tried to swim across and was never seen again, his body having been sucked down into the bowels of the earth--not a bad way of disposing of it. A few years ago they found the remains of a Roman state barge at the bottom of the lake. The bronze ornaments and even part of the wooden walls were intact. The barge was presumably used as a float in some imperial pageant of old Rome.

At sunset the women and girls who had been busy all day gathering fruit began to pass by our inn, bearing vast loads of fragrant strawberries on their heads. The berries are picked into flat wide baskets with handles, through which a long stick is passed, joining together the ten or twelve baskets that constitute a load. As each sun-browned wench trudged past, our eyes were rejoiced with a superb flare of scarlet, and our noses--ah! nothing in this world has ever tasted so good as the strawberries of Nemi smell.

Just where the white highroad, following the line of the old crater, curves and is hidden by a group of dark ilex trees, the women halted beside the line of gay painted carts waiting to carry the strawberries to Rome. We discovered the _carretta_ of Leandro’s uncle, a fine affair painted blue and yellow, with long shafts and a comfortable seat beneath a red and white striped awning. Oreste, the driver, a shrewd peasant, in spite of his loutish, grumpy manner, has a certain family resemblance to his cousin the waiter, but how contact with the world has sharpened Leandro’s wits, polished his manners! Oreste and Leandro! Don’t you love the classic names? They linger here in the country and help to bring back to you Theocritus and the golden age of Magna Grecia.

“At what hour do you start?” J. asked Oreste.

“At ten o’clock.”

“It must be a very long drive; do you not get dreadfully tired? what time do you reach Rome?”

Oreste answered my remarks in the order they were put.

“The distance is twenty miles; when I am tired I sleep; with luck I shall reach the gates of Rome by four o’clock in the morning.”

“Who minds the cart while you sleep?”

“Lupetto here;” he patted the dearest little dog on the seat beside him. Lupetto looks like a young fox, he has the brightest eyes, the smallest pointed ears, and a soft furry tan coat clipped like a lion’s.

“As long as Lupetto is quiet and I hear this music,” he touched with his long carter’s whip the string of bells round the horse’s neck, “I doze in peace. When the bells stop jingling or Lupetto barks I rouse myself to find out what is the matter.”

“Have you ever been robbed?”

“That sometimes happens with a load of wine, but with fruit, no. Everybody knows that I never carry money and that I have a good knife!” he drew the knife from his boot and ran his thumb along the blade, testing the sharpness of the edge.

The moon, a golden sickle, hung low in the sky, the big soft stars seemed nearer to the earth than usual. Lupetto gave an impatient little bark, the horse stirred uneasily, jingling his bells. The last basket of strawberries had been loaded on the cart; it was clearly time to be off. Oreste gathered up his reins and whistled to his horse.

“_Felice notte_ (A happy night).” He grunted the pretty greeting to us over his shoulder awkwardly. After watching Oreste with his two best friends, his horse and his dog, start on the long night journey to Rome, we went back to the castle garden, where our landlord treated us to anecdotes touching that interesting family, the Orsini.

Everything comes to him who knows how to wait! Ever since we first went to live at the Palazzo Rusticucci I have longed to climb to the top of Monte Cavo, the highest of the Alban hills. From our terrace you can see the front of the old Passionist monastery on its summit glinting white in the sun. Yesterday the long waiting came to an end and I have seen my Carcassonne! We reached the summit after a two hours’ walk up the old Via Triumphalis--the steep paved way along which the Roman generals once passed to celebrate the military triumphs at the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, which stood at the top of Monte Cavo. It is a wonderful road; in some places the old basalt pavement is as good as on the day when it was laid, some time “before the year one”! Truly a glorious walk, with sudden splendid vistas over plain and mountains, and cool odorous groves where we found the wild heartsease, sensitive ethereal flowers, poor relations of our fat, stall-fed purple and gold terrace pansies. A good bath of nature, such as we had climbing the flanks of Monte Cavo, makes man and all his works--even the higher cultivation of flowers--seem a vain thing. We passed the vast crater of another extinct volcano called the Camp of Hannibal, who according to local tradition once bivouacked here. In a few days the garrison will come from Rome for its annual summer camping out, and Beppino, our fascinating young friend with the burning brown eyes, will pitch his tent possibly on the very spot where Hannibal slept.

The temple of Jupiter is gone; its ruins were destroyed by Cardinal York, one of the last of the Stuarts, in 1777, when he built the monastery. Was not that trying of him? and so inappropriate too, for whatever their faults may have been the Stuarts have always been protectors of the arts. Half of the monastery is now a government meteorological station, the other half an inn, which concerned us more. We ordered supper and while waiting for it moused about in the old garden till we found the little that remains of the temple, a few fragments of the foundation and some pieces of marble roughly built into the garden wall. “_Sic transit gloria mundi_,” the temple is gone, the monastery too; meanwhile remain eggs in black butter for hungry travellers, and the imperishable beauty of the view. The wise old monks always chose the most magnificent sites for their monasteries. Good air and a fine outlook were what they held to be essential; they found the ideal site, and somehow screwed up the real to fit it. Do you know a better rule for building one’s house? I do not.

How do you suppose it felt after having been grilled alive on the stones of Rome for a month, to borrow a shawl from the landlady, in order to sit out after sunset and enjoy the wonderful prospect? Below, at the foot of Monte Cavo, lay the lakes of Albano and Nemi, darkly blue where they were not silver, and far, far off, a pale blue bubble on the horizon, gleamed the dome of St. Peter’s. If we could have borrowed a spyglass from the meteorological bureau, I am sure we could have made out the white columns of our terrace in the shadow of the great dome. When it grew too cold to sit out, the landlady showed us to a pair of tiny stone cells. In the watches of the night I knocked on the thick wall that separated us, “for company,” as some lonely Passionist monk may have rapped a greeting to a brother in the dark winter nights of long ago. In spite of the odor of sanctity (stronger here than I have ever known it), hardness of bed, flabbiness of pillow, in spite of the keen chill before dawn, that one cool night in the old Passionist monastery will remain a delicious memory when the hot pavements of a Roman July are forgotten!

Early the next morning we made the descent by a short cut, a steep path that brought us out on the highway not far from Nemi.

Near the town we overtook Oreste on his way back from Rome. He had drawn up his cart in an olive grove and was examining the fruit on the trees. Lupetto, whose turn it was to sleep, lay snugly curled up on the seat. We sat down to rest in the pleasant shade of the gray green leaves. There are twelve aged olive trees in the grove, and another larger and more picturesque than the rest originally belonging to the same group, standing alone, on the other side of the white high road. The trunk of this old tree is almost hollow, a mere shell of shaggy bark. The knotted roots reach out an amazing distance from the stem before they grip the earth. The twisted trunk and limbs look like a tortured human being with uplifted arms, and suggest the men turned to trees of the Inferno.

“This is the finest olive tree I have seen in Italy,” J. said. Oreste gloomily assented.

“It is a noble tree worth any three of the others. See how many olives it has. Leandro will come soon to gather them.”

“Your cousin, Leandro?”

“Yes; this is his tree. My grandfather of blessed memory who owned these thirteen trees had thirteen children. When he died he left one olive tree to each child. The mother of Leandro was his favorite daughter, there is no denying that, and to her he left this tree, though by good rights it should have come to the eldest son, my father. They quarrelled at the time, but my uncle the priest patched things up between them, he said it was a disgrace for kindred to quarrel over an inheritance. All very well for him to preach,--priests are obliged to, that is how they earn their living. I was a mere child, or the matter would not have been so easily settled, I can tell you. It is too late now; this famous tree is Leandro’s, I must content myself with that blighted one yonder, plainly the poorest of the lot.”

“Your tree has not been so well cared for as the others,” J. said. “Look how wisely these branches have been pruned. The sun reaches every part.” The branches in the middle of the big olive had been neatly cut away leaving an open space the shape of a cup in the centre.

“There may be something in what you say,” grumbled Oreste, “indeed I have little time to care for my property. I must always be on the road, now with wine, now with olives, now with strawberries. Besides, I have not Leandro’s opportunities; he sells to the strangers!”

“We will try your oil; bring the first you make to the Palazzo Rusticucci.” On this we parted. We shall see Oreste in Rome before long and ascertain if the oil from his tree is as good as that of the famous old patriarch tree which we have had in other years from Leandro. To know the vines that bear your grapes and the trees that give your olives and oil is the next best thing to owning them, don’t you think?

The most interesting person we have met in Nemi is an old soldier of Garibaldi’s. We were watching the sunset from the terrace of the inn one evening, when we fell into talk with him. He is a grave, thoughtful man; stern of expression, slow of speech, not quite like any other Italian I have ever known. He walks with a cane, and stoops badly; I am sure if he could stand upright he would measure six feet two inches in height. His face is a network of wrinkles, he has an ugly red scar across one cheek.

The conversation beginning with the weather soon changed to politics. At first he spoke in English, of which he has a small stock of words. Something was said about the Pope and the temporal power. He bristled all over, growing red as a turkey cock as he said,--

“The Popay as a Popay, very welley; the Popay as a Kingay, not at alley!”

After this he relapsed into Italian and would not be induced to speak more English. Cruel, was it not? He is gloomy enough about the present political situation; pessimistic about the future.

He spoke with slow cold anger of a recent act of the Italian parliament, which he cannot forgive.

“They to pass a vote of censure on Francesco Crispi! The whole lot of them are not worth one finger of his hand!” he said.

“Everybody knows that it was the result of a political cabal against Crispi.”

“No, not everybody; some are wholly ignorant and others forget! We who were with him in Sicily, where he was as the right hand of Garibaldi, know the man for what he is. He has been insulted, and his friends will be slow to forget the insult.”

“You also were in Sicily with Garibaldi?”

“I am one of the Thousand.”

It was as if he had said “I am one of the Three Hundred of Thermopylæ,” or the “Six Hundred of Balaclava!” It was electrifying to find oneself in the company of one of those “few and good men” who sailed with Garibaldi from Quarto, on the 5th of May, 1860, landed six days later at Marsala under the protection of the British gunboats Intrepid and Argus, made the glorious march to Palermo, and freed Sicily and Naples from the hateful yoke of the Bourbons.

“I have heard that you of the Thousand loved your chief as if he had been your father; is this true?”

“Our acts, not merely our words, proved it to be true. We would have died for him to the last man. Even the women and priests wanted to take up arms and follow Garibaldi. You know the story of the nuns? A whole convent of nuns, from the old mother abbess to the youngest novice, gave him the kiss of peace, they would not be denied!” He grew visibly younger as he talked, there was fire in the man; it took but the breath of our sympathy to blow the embers to a flame.