CHAPTER I.

“CITTÀ VECCHIA!”

A comfortable family party came Romeward one May morning from Turin. They had the railway carriage quite to themselves, and occupied it fully. Mr. Vane lay stretched at length on the front seat, with a travelling-bag and two shawls under his head. It was his first visit to Italy, consequently his first approach to Rome, but he declined his daughters’ invitation to look out. He would prefer, he said, to admire the country when he should feel more in the mood. “Besides,” he said, “to look at scenery when one is going through it behind a locomotive irritates both the eyes and the temper. If you wish to see a near object, no sooner have you fixed your eyes upon it than it is whisked out of sight, and your pupils contract with a snap; if a distant one, the moment you perceive that it is worth seeing, some sharp bit of foreground starts up and enters like a bramble between your eyelids. It’s a Sancho Panza feast, and I’ll none of it. You children can look out and tantalize your tempers, if it please you.”

“Oh! thank you,” his daughter Isabel said dryly, availing herself of the permission.

Presently she addressed him again: “Papa, if I could find a fault in you, it would be that you are such a very unreasonably reasonable man. You have always so many arguments in favor of every proposition you lay down, there isn’t a handle left to take it up by.”

“Thank you!” the gentleman echoed. And then there was silence for a little while—a silence of tongues; but, with a ceaseless whirr and buzz, the flying train was casting the north behind, and plunging into the south like a bee into a flower.

Mr. Vane’s two daughters, twenty and twenty-two years of age, sat opposite him, each at a window, Isabel moving frequently, glancing here and there, and speaking whenever the spirit was stirred; Bianca, the younger, seeming to be in a trance. These two girls were as unlike in appearance as it is possible for two persons to be who have many points of resemblance. Both had fine dark eyes, dark hair, complexions of a clear, pale olive, and features sufficiently regular. Bianca was a trifle taller and finer in shape, and her manner had a gentle dignity, while her sister’s was lively and positive. Bianca’s mouth was fuller, sweeter, and more silent, and her voice softer. She had a more penetrating mind than most persons were aware of, and thought and observed more than she said. Isabel caught quickly at the surfaces of things, and had a clever way of weaving other people’s ideas into her talk that sometimes made her appear brilliant. It might be said that the impressions of the elder were cameo, those of the younger intaglio. For the rest, let their story speak for them.

The father was a large, leisurely, middle-aged gentleman, whom critical people like to call indolent. He certainly had, as his elder daughter intimated, the faculty of finding a great many excellent reasons why he should not exert himself unnecessarily, and it is probable that he might never have been brought to the pitch of a trans-atlantic voyage but for Miss Isabel’s politic arguments in urging the matter.

“In Europe one can be so quiet,” she said. “One can live there without being tormented by the idea that one should be doing something for somebody. It isn’t considered necessary to have a mission. Everything happens half an hour or so after time, and everybody goes to sleep in the middle of the day—in the middle of the street, too, if they like. I’ve heard people say that it’s just delicious the way the clergy take their promenade there. Two of them will walk slowly along a few minutes, then stop and carry on their conversation a little while, as if they were in the Elysian Fields, then resume their walk, and so on, walking and pausing, in the most delightfully leisurely way. Fancy that in New York! Why, our idea of walking is to get one foot before the other as quickly as we can. Going out, we see only the spot we start from and the spot we arrive at, and we shoot from the one to the other as if we wore percussion-caps on our heads. Marion says that Italy is the fabled lotos, and that all the dust and dirt people talk so about is nothing but pollen.”

Mr. Vane, who in America felt himself like a drone in the midst of bees, could not resist this charming picture, and we accordingly find him in the land of the lotos.

“Bianca,” her sister said presently, “do you remember the Goldsmith’s history of Rome we studied at school? I’ve forgotten every bit of it but the title, and an impression of great uncomfortable doings, and haranguing and attitudinizing, and killing. I recollect it was always a wonder to me when I found there were people enough left to begin a new chapter with. Now we are going to see the places. How glad I am we shall not see any of the tremendous people!”

She put her head out of the window and added: “I don’t find that the country looks any better than Massachusetts. But, for all that, I am enchanted to be here. How I have longed to come!”

“Indeed!” her father said, staring a little. “Why, then, did you not let us come six months ago, instead of clinging to London and Paris?”

She smiled indulgently on him. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten how, when I was a child, and when I had mince-pie for dinner, I used to slyly pick out the large raisins and put them under the edge of my plate to eat afterward. I recollect your finding me out once, and asking me if I didn’t like raisins, and I was in terror lest you were going to take them away from me. I’ve been doing the same thing now—saving the best for the last. I wished to dispose of everything else first, so that, when I return to America, I can shut my eyes in Rome, and not open them again till they see the shores of the New World. And, between ourselves, papa, isn’t it a dreadfully new world? I wouldn’t own it to a foreigner, of course; but you’re such a dear, stanch old Yankee!” And she leaned forward and gave him an affectionate pinch in the cheek.

The younger sister turned quickly at that. “O Bell! don’t turn traitor,” she exclaimed. “Newness is not a disadvantage always. When the world was new the Creator praised it, but there is no record of his ever having praised it after.”

Mr. Vane looked at his younger daughter with a wistful, lingering smile. He always looked attentively at Bianca when she spoke.

Isabel lifted her hands in wonder. “Well, really, she is playing patriot! Who have I heard say that her body was born in America, but her soul in Italy? Who have I heard say that the children of Israel were not Egyptians, though they were born by the Nile?”

Bianca smiled to herself softly, and looked out of the window as she answered: “I am not _playing_ patriot. The feeling was always in my mind, hanging there silent like a bell in its tower; and now and then it rang. It always rang when struck.”

“That’s my darling!” her father exclaimed. “Keep your sweet-toned patriotism in its bell-tower. I don’t like the sort that is always firing india-crackers under everybody’s nose. By the way,” he added after a while, rousing again, rather unaccountably, “what an absurdity it is in us, this coming to Rome in May! To-day is the second of the month. We should have come in December. I wonder I allowed myself to be so persuaded. I have a mind to go back at once.”

His elder daughter regarded him tranquilly. “Don’t excite yourself unnecessarily, papa,” she said; “we are behind a coachman who never turns back. By the time we reach Rome you will be as contented as a lamb. Do not you perceive something beautiful in our coming at this season, with the orange-flowers and the jasmines? We do not arrive, we simply bloom. Even dear old papa will put on a film of tender green over his sombreness, like a patriarchal spruce-tree; and as to Bianca and me—”

She sang:

“Two half-open roses on one twig grew, Sweet is the summer. A nightingale sang there the whole night through Sweet is the summer.”

“Here we are! What a comfort that we have not to go to a hotel nor search for lodgings! It is very nice to have a friend to prepare everything.”

In fact, a friend of the family, resident in Rome, who had written and received a score or so of letters on the subject of this journey, was waiting outside the barrier at that moment. They saw her a little apart from the crowd, looking for them as they gave up their tickets; then a servant took their packages, and they were cordially welcomed to Rome. This lady has so long been accustomed to hearing herself announced by the maid-servants of the friends she visits as the “Signora Ottant’-otto,” from the number of her house, that she will not be displeased if we continue the title.

A carriage was called, and in a few minutes they had reached the home prepared for their reception. It was an old-fashioned Roman house, situated on a high slope of the Viminal where it meets the Esquiline in a scarcely perceptible dent. The _portone_, entrance, and stairs were palatial in size, the latter having broad landings lighted by double windows in the middle of each story; and instead of a mere passage or small waiting-room, the door of the apartment opened at once into a noble _sala_. Large chambers surrounded this _sala_, and a backward-extending wing held smaller rooms and a kitchen. All this part of the house looked into a garden, where orange-trees stood with their sprinkle of fragrant snow, and jasmines reared their solid cones of flowery gold, perfuming every breeze that entered. Beyond the garden extended an orchard and vineyard, hiding all that part of the city except the long roof and façade of the church of St. Catherine of Siena, and the grand old tower that Vittoria Colonna built her convent walls about. These looked over the rich verdure, standing out dark and massive against the clear western sky.

“The front rooms are town, the back rooms country,” the Signora said. “In the front rooms we have the ‘dim, religious light’ that Italians love; here are silence, except for the birds, sunshine, and flowers.”

The front drawing-rooms were conventional, but the _sala_ and dining-room had a character quite new to the travellers. The uncovered brick floors, freshly sprinkled and swept; the faded old screens of green silk or embroidered satin, set in carved frames; the tarnished gilt chairs with scarlet velvet cushions; the large sofas, and tables, and cases of drawers, all finely carved; the walls almost entirely covered with old oil-paintings of every size, some without frames, some so dim that amid the haze of faded color a face would look forth, or an arm be thrust out as from a cloud—all these made up a picture very different from the rich, toned-down freshness of their New England home, where they trod on velvet, and would no more have admitted a chair of scarlet and gold than they would have allowed a curtain to hang after the sun had made a streak in it.

The girls were enchanted. “How delightfully dingy everything is!” Isabel cried. “It’s like grandmother’s beautiful cashmere shawl that is a hundred years old.”

And then the travellers were good enough to say that they were hungry, and would not be displeased if luncheon should be very prompt at the hour of noon.

“After this, you see, we shall sail right into your track without a break,” Mr. Vane said. “Your hours suit me perfectly; and whether it should be luncheon or dinner at noon does not make the least difference to me at this season. In cold weather I like a late dinner.”

“I think you will find the early dinner pleasanter in summer,” the Signora said; “that is, if you rise early. You will soon learn, if you have not learned already, to give up the heavy American breakfast, and so will be hungry by noon. That gives you the fresh of the morning free, with little digestive work to dull your activity, and the lovely evenings from five to eight or nine. If you wish to go out romancing by moonlight, the supper is just enough to content, without clogging. The next best plan is, coffee on waking, breakfast at ten, and dinner at four or five after your nap. I have tried all ways, and settled on the first for this country. Of course it wouldn’t answer for our indoor, chilly life at the other side of the world.”

“I do not like a four or five o’clock dinner,” Mr. Vane said with decision. “It is neither one thing nor the other; and I hate to go from the bed to the dinner-table.”

It was the Signora’s first house-keeping for any one but herself, and she was full of a pleasant anxiety. What solemn conferences she had with the _donna_, what explanations, what charges she gave! And how learned she became in matters to which before she had not given a thought! In such a dark and narrow street, in a dingy little shop, was to be found the best chocolate in Rome. In such another place, where you would least expect, they sold coffee of unimpeachable excellence, which, of course, one had roasted and ground in one’s own house. Another journey was made for tea. She became an object of terror to sellers of meat and vegetables, and fruit-venders trembled before her. To witness the scorn with which she rejected apricots that had not the precise cloudless sunset tint, peaches that were of a vulgar red and green complexion or too pale in hue, mandarins not sufficiently loose of skin and flattened at the poles, and grapes and figs that could not answer in the affirmative at least six stern questions, one would have supposed that she must have been accustomed to such fruits as grew in the Garden of Eden. As to wine, the story of its getting was an admirable illustration of moral pulley-power. A friend’s friend’s, etc., friend had two friends who owned vineyards and made wine, and one was famous for his white and another for his red. The first power in this machinery was a semi-weekly cup of tea which a certain respectable, antique bachelor had taken regularly with the Signora time out of mind, and, losing which, his life would have been quite disjointed. The flavor of the tea did not, of course, extend beyond him, but it influenced certain favors in his power to grant, which, in turn, moved the next wheel; and so on, quite in order, till a way was made from certain cool grottos, where the hoarded wines sparkled to themselves in the dark, to the small dinner-table where our friends in the old Roman house sat and sipped liquid rubies or sunshine for an absurdly small price considering the result.

“But you are giving us too much of your time,” the Vanes expostulated. “We cannot permit you to turn housekeeper for us. How will you be able to write?”

For the Signora Ottant’-otto was an authoress. “In the first flush of seeing you I could not content myself to write a line,” she said; “and by the time I shall have become calm my machinery will be in working order. After that nothing will be necessary but an occasional warning word or glance.”

This conversation did not, however, take place till the end of the first week. The first day the house-keeping seemed to have arranged itself without human intervention.

As they seated themselves at the luncheon-table the soft boom of the gun from St. Angelo proclaimed the hour of noon, and immediately another booming, as soft, but more musical, came from the near _campanile_ of the Liberian basilica, where the great bell struck the Angelus, followed by all the bells in the tower in a _festa_ ringing.

“That is Maria Assunta and her four ladies of honor,” the Signora said, with all the pride of a proprietor. “I may as well tell you that they and the church they belong to are my one weakness in Rome. I have been up the _campanile_ to visit those bells, have read their inscriptions and touched their embossed sides, even while they were being rung. An Italian boy who was with me exclaimed when I put my hand to the ringing rim of the great bell: ‘_E un peccato! Ha fatto tacere Maria Santissima!_’”

They smiled and listened. It pleased them to know what the Signora liked and how she liked.

“I remember the first time I saw that church,” she said, pleased to go on. “It was my first Christmas in Rome, and, after having heard a Mass at Aurora, I went out alone later, to lose myself and see what I would come to. I wandered into the long street that is now so familiar, and saw the tip of a _campanile_ peeping at me over the hill in front like a beckoning finger. I followed, and presently knew where I must be, though I had carefully refrained from reading descriptions of anything. The morning was fresh and clear, but inside the church was quite dim, except that the round window high up the eastern end of the nave was thrust through by a long bar of sunshine that looked as though it might make a hole for itself out the other end, it was so live and solid. I recollected pictures I had seen of the Jewish tabernacle, with the two bars by which it was carried, or lifted, and I said to myself, Suppose another gold bar should be put in, and the whole church, and all who are in it, carried off over hill and dale, and through the air to some Promised Land fairer than Italy. There was a man up outside who seemed to be afraid of such a catastrophe; for he was struggling to draw together the two halves of a red curtain over the window. It was not easy to do—I presume he was resisted—but finally everything was shut out but a blush. All that upper end of the nave was rosy, and pink reflections ran along the inner sides of the two rows of white columns, like ripples in water, and faded at the grand altar they had strained to reach. You could fancy they sighed with contentment when they did reach it. The sacristy-bell rang for a Mass beginning just as I entered, and I took that as an indication that I was to go no further till I had heard it. So I knelt close to the door in a little nook by the tribune. The priest stopped at the altar in the very farthest corner. I could see him between the columns, and so far away that I could hardly know when he knelt or rose. When the Mass was over, I seated myself where the bases of two columns before the Borghese Chapel form a grand marble throne, and there I stayed the whole forenoon.”

“Nothing strikes me more in Catholic churches,” Mr. Vane said, “than to see a worshipper attending to the service from some far nook or corner, with a crowd of people walking about between him and the altar. You do not seem to think it necessary to be near the priest or hear what he is saying. That is one great difference between you and Protestants. What their minister says is all. Though, to be sure,” he added, “one wouldn’t always know what the priest were saying, if one were close to him.”

“It isn’t necessary as long as we know what he is doing,” the Signora replied rather quickly. “Besides, Catholics, even uneducated ones, do know very nearly the words he is speaking, without hearing them. It is a mistake constantly made by Protestants to think that Catholics do not understand, because they themselves do not. They forget that there is little variety in the service, and that in all essential parts one Mass is like all other Masses. An intelligent Catholic, whether he can read or not, can tell you just what the priest is doing as far off as he can see him, and knows just what prayers he should offer at the moment. As for the priest or his assistant not speaking distinctly, they often do, oftener than not; and when they do not, it is not strange. The same words, repeated over and over again, even when repeated with the whole heart, have a tendency to become indistinct, and to drop the consonants and keep only the vowels. The torso of sound is all right.”

“Like the foot of your bronze St. Peter, worn smooth with oft-repeated, fervent kisses,” the gentleman said, with a gravity that hid a smile.” You may say that it has only the vowel shape of a foot, the consonant angles quite kissed away.”

The Signora lifted her head a little, and immediately changed the subject. Decidedly, she thought, it would be necessary to correct Mr. Vane’s conversation. But it would not be pleasant to do so the first day.

They lingered at the table nearly an hour, talking over old times and friends, and who were dead and who were married; till presently, it having got buzzed about among the select number of flies in the room that there was fruit at hand, they reminded the company to retire.

“Tea at five and supper at nine,” was the Signora’s parting reminder. “And now, a pleasant rest to you!”