Chapter 4

There was one lady in particular, who spared no pains to attract him to herself. She was the widow of a celebrated _litterateur_ and was herself well known as a brilliant but shallow writer. She was not young, but she was well-preserved, and owed much to the arts of the toilet. I saw her lavishing her smiles and blandishments on my dear master; I saw that he was not insensible to the power of her charms, artificial as they were; and a cruel jealousy fastened, like the vulture of Prometheus, on my vitals.

Could I but have entered the lists with her on equal ground; could I but have appeared before him in my own proper person, arrayed in appropriate and maidenly costume, I felt sure of gaining the victory, for I had youth on my side; I had already an interest in his heart; but, alas! I could not do this without first announcing myself as an impostor, as a liar and deceiver, to the man whose good opinion I prized above all earthly things.

A dreadful thought now rested on my mind day and night: What if this woman should accomplish her designs? What if my master should marry her? What would then become of me?

But I was spared this trial.

The translation was finished; it was in the hands of the publisher; and the proof-sheets had been carefully revised, partly by my master, partly by myself. He had insisted on putting my name with his own on the title-page; but I refused my consent with a pertinacity which he could not comprehend, and which came nearer making him angry than any thing that had ever transpired between us.

One day, as I sat in the library, I saw my master come home, accompanied by two gentlemen. He did not, as was his custom with his intimates, bring them into the library, but received them in the little used reception-room. They remained some time.

When they left, my master came into the library, rubbing his hands and looking exceedingly well-pleased. But at sight of me, his countenance fell. He approached me, and in a tone of regret, said:

'My poor Eugene! we must part.'

Part? It seemed as if the sun was suddenly blotted from the heavens.

I started up, and looked at him with a face so white and terror-stricken that he came up to me and laid his hand kindly on my shoulder.

'My poor Eugene!' he repeated, 'it is too true--we must part.'

I tried to speak. 'Part!' I cried. 'O my master--'

Tears and sobs choked my utterance, in spite of all my efforts to restrain them. I sat down again, and gave free vent to my irrepressible grief.

My master was much affected by the sight of my emotion; and for some minutes the silence was unbroken, save by my heart-wrung sobs.

'Nay, Eugene, this is womanish; bear it like a man,' said he, wiping the tears from his own eyes. 'Most gladly would I spare you this sorrow; most gladly retain you near me; but in this matter I am powerless. I have received an appointment from government, to travel in Northern Asia, in order to study the dialects of that vast region. Every individual who is to accompany me has been officially specified, and there is no place left for my poor Eugene.'

'O my dear, dear master!' cried I, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, 'take me with you--I shall die if you, leave me--put me in the place of some one else.'

'Impossible,' said he. 'The government has filled up every place with its own creatures--except,' he added, with a faint smile, 'that they have left provision for my wife--if married. I would I had the wand of an enchanter, Eugene, that I might transform you to a woman, and make you my wife.'

His wife! his wife! Had I heard the words aright? I sprang to my feet. I tried to say, 'I _am_ a woman--I will be your wife!' but my tongue refused its utterance--there was a rushing sound in my ears--I grasped the air wildly--I heard my master cry, 'Eugene! Eugene!' as he rushed forward to support me, and the next moment I lost consciousness.

* * * * *

When I recovered my senses, I was still in the arms of my master. He had borne me to the window, and torn open my vest and shirt-collar. I looked up in his face. One glance revealed to me that my secret was discovered.

Blushing and trembling, I tried to raise myself from his arms; but he held me fast.

'Eugene,' said he, in earnest tones, 'tell me the truth. Are you indeed a woman?'

'I am. My name is Eugenie D----, O my dear master! forgive the deception I have practiced. Do not despise me.'

'Eugenie!' cried he, in joyful accents, 'you shall go with me to the East! You shall go as _my wife! Vive I' Empereur_!

'But wherefore this disguise?' he added.

I told him my story in few words; and informed him that I was that very _young woman_ who had applied to him for the office I now held.

'Is it possible?' exclaimed he. 'But, Eugenie, tell me--do you really love me as you have so often protested you did?'

'Yes, my dear master,' I whispered.

'_Vive l'Empereur_!' cried he again; 'but for his strictness I should never have found it out. Now go; array yourself in your woman's gear, and let me see you as you really are.'

I went; and resumed, with a pleasure I can not describe, the garments I had for a whole year forsworn.

When I returned, my master caught me to his heart, and thanked Heaven for the 'charming wife' so unexpectedly sent him.

* * * * *

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

III.

ON THE CAMPAGNA.

There was an indefinable charm, to a lively man like Caper, in spending a day in the open country around Rome. Whether it was passed, gun in hand, near the Solfatara, trying to shoot snipe and woodcock, or, with paint-box and stool, seated under a large white cotton umbrella, sketching in the valley of Poussin or out on the Via Appia, that day was invariably marked down to be remembered.

On one of those golden February mornings, when the pretty English girls tramp through the long grass of the Villa Borghese, gathering the perfumed violets into those modest little bouquets, that peep out from their setting of green leaves, like faith struggling with jealousy, Caper, Rocjean, and a good-natured German, named Von Bluhmen, made an excursion out in the Campagna.

They hired a one-horse vetturo in the piazza di Spagna, and packing in their sketching materials and a basket well filled with luncheon and bottles of red wine, started off, soon reaching the Saint Sebastian gate. Further on, they passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and saw streaming over the Campagna the Roman hunt-hounds, twenty couples, making straight tails after a red fox, while a score of well-mounted horsemen--here and there a red coat and white breeches--came riding furiously after. Along the road-side were handsome open carriages, filled with wit and beauty, talent and petticoats; and bright were the blue eyes, and red the healthy cheeks of the English girls, as they saw how well their countrymen and lovers led off the chase. Englishmen _have_ good legs.

Continuing along the Appian way, either side of which was bordered by tombs crumbling to decay; some of them covered with nature's lace, the graceful ivy, others with only a pile of turf above them, others with shattered column and mutilated statue at their base--the occupants of the vetturo were silent. They saw before them the wide plain, shut in on the horizon by high mountains, with snow-covered peaks and sides, while they were living in the warmth of an American June morning; the breeze that swept over them was gentle and exhilarating; in the long grass waving by the way-side, they heard the shrill cries of the cicadas; while the clouds, driven along the wide reach of heaven, assuming fantastic forms, and in changing light and shadow mantling the distant mountains, gave our trio a rare chance to study cloud-effects to great advantage.

'I say, driver, what's your name?' asked Rocjean of the _vetturino_.

'Cæsar, _padrone mio_,' answered the man.

'Are you descended from the celebrated Julius?' asked Caper, laughing.

'Yes, sir, my grandfather's name was Julius.'

''That every like is not the same, O Cæsar! The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon,''

soliloquized Caper; and as by this time they had reached a place where both he and Rocjean thought a fine view of the ruined aqueduct might be taken, they ordered the driver to stop, and taking out their sketching materials, sent him back to Rome, telling him to come out for them about four o'clock, when they would be ready to return.

While they were yet in the road, there came along a very large countryman, mounted on a very small jackass; he was sitting side-saddle fashion, one leg crossed over the other, the lower leg nearly touching the ground; one hand held a pipe to his mouth, while the other held an olive branch, by no means an emblem of peace to the jackass, who twitched one long ear and then the other, in expectation of a momentary visit from it on either side of his head. Following, at a dutiful distance behind, came a splendid specimen of a Roman peasant-woman, a true _contadina_: poised on her head was a very large round basket, from over the edge of which sundry chickens' heads and cocks' feathers arose, and while Caper was looking at the basket, he saw two tiny little arms stuck up suddenly above the chickens, and then heard a faint squall--it was her baby. An instantaneous desire seized Caper to make a rough sketch of the family group, and hailing the man, he asked him for a light to his cigar. The jackass was stopped by pulling his left ear--the ears answering for reins--and after giving a light, the man was going on, when Caper, taking a _scudo_ from his pocket, told him that if he would let him make a sketch of himself, wife, and jackass, he would give it to him, telling him also that he would not detain them over an hour.

'If you'll give me a _buona mano_ besides the _scudo_, I'll do it,' he answered.

The _buona mano_ is the ignis fatuus that leads on three fourths of the Italians; it is the bright spark that wakes them up to exertion. No matter what the fixed price for doing any thing may be, there must always be a something undefined ahead of it, to crown the work when accomplished. It makes labor a lottery; it makes even sawing wood a species of gambling. Caper promised a _buona mano_.

The man told his wife that the Signore was to make a _ritratto_, a picture of them all, including the jackass, at which she laughed heartily, showing a splendid set of brilliantly white teeth. A finer type of woman it would be hard to find, for she was tall, straight, with magnificent bust and broad hips. Her hair, thick and black, was drawn back from her forehead like a Chinese, and was confined behind her head with two long silver pins, the heads representing flowers; heavy, crescent-shaped, gold earrings hung from her ears; around her full throat circled two strings of red coral beads. Her boddice of crimson cloth was met by the well-filled out-folds of her white linen shirt, the sleeves of which fell from her shoulders below her elbows, in full, graceful folds; her skirt was of heavy white woolen stuff, while her blue apron, of the same material, had three broad stripes of golden yellow, one near the top and the other two near each other at the bottom; the folds of the apron were few, and fell in heavy, regular lines. A full, liquid-brown pair of eyes gazed calmly on the painter, as she stood beside her husband, easily, gracefully; without a sign from the artist, taking a position that the most studied care could not have improved.

'_Benissimo_!' cried Caper, 'the position couldn't be better;' and seizing his sketch-book and pencils, unfolding his umbrella and planting its spiked end in the ground, and arranging his sketching-stool, he was in five minutes hard at work. As soon as he could draw the basket, he told the woman she might take it from her head and put it on the ground, for he believed the weight must incommode her. This done, she resumed her position, and Caper, working with all his might, had his sketch sufficiently finished before the hour was over to tell his group that it was finished, at the same time handing the man a _scudo_ and a handsome _buona mano_.

Rocjean and Von Bluhmen, who had assiduously looked on, now and then joking with the _contadino_ and his wife, proposed, after the sketch was finished, that Caper should ask his friends to help them finish their luncheon; this was joyously agreed to, and the party, having left the road and found a pleasant spot, under a group of ilex-trees, were soon busy finishing the eatables. It was refreshing to see how the handsome _contadina_ emptied glass after glass of red wine. The husband did his share of drinking; but his wife eclipsed him. Having learned from Caper that his first name was Giacomo, she shouted forth a rondinella, making up the words as she went along, and in it gave a ludicrous account of Giacomo, the artist, who took a jackass's portrait, herself and husband holding him, and the baby squalling in harmony. This met with an embarrassment of success, and amid the applause of Rocjean, Caper, and Von Bluhmen, the _contadino_, wife, and baggage departed. She, however, told Caper where she lived in the Campagna, and that she had a beautiful little sister, whose _ritratta_ he should take, if he would come to see her.

[It is needless to inform the reader that _he went_.]

Lighting cigars, Rocjean and Caper declared they must have a siesta, even if they had to doze on their stools, for neither of them ever could accustom himself to the Roman fashion of throwing one's self on the ground, and sleeping with their faces to the earth. Von Bluhmen, a fiery amateur of sketching, walked off to take a 'near view' of the aqueduct, and the two artists were left to repose.

'I say, Caper, does it ever come into your head to people all this broad Campagna with old Romans?' asked Rocjean.

'Yes, all the time. Do you know that when I am out here, and stumble over the door-way of an old Roman tomb, or find one of those thousand caves in the tufa rock, I often have a curious feeling that from out that tomb or cave will stalk forth in broad daylight some old Roman centurion or senator, in flowing robe.'

'Do you ever think,' asked Rocjean, 'of those seventy thousand poor devils of Jews who helped build the Coliseum and the Arch of Titus? Do you ever reflect over the millions of _slaves_ who worked for these same poetical, flowing-robed, old senators and centurions? _Ma foi_! for a Republic, you men of the United States have a finished education for any thing but republicans. The great world-long struggle of a few to crush and destroy the many, you learn profoundly; you know in all its glittering cruelty and horror the entire history, and you weave from it no god-like moral. Nothing astonished me more, during my residence in the United States, than this same lack of drawing from the experience of ages the deduction that you were the only really blessed and happy nation in the world. Your educated men know less of the history of their own country, and feel less its sublime teachings, than any other race of men in the world. The instruction your young men receive at school and college, in what way does it prepare them to become men fit for a republic?'

'You are preaching a sermon,' said Caper.

'I am reciting the text; the sermon will be preached by the god of battles to the roar of cannons and the crack of rifles, and I hope you'll profit by it after you hear it.'

'Well,' interrupted Caper, 'what do you think of the English?'

'For a practical people, they are the greatest fools on the earth. Thoroughly convinced at heart that they have no _esprit_, they rush in to show the world that they have a superabundance of it.... It interferes with their principles, no matter; it touches their pockets, behold it is gone, and the cold, flat, dead reality stares you in the face.'

'You are a Frenchman, Rocjean, and you do them injustice. Had Shakspeare no _esprit_?' asked Caper.

'Shakspeare was a Frenchman,' replied Rocjean.

'We--ll!'

'Prove to me that he was not?'

'Prove to me that he was!'

'Certainly. The family of Jacques Pierre was as certainly French as Raimond de Rocjean's. Jacques Pierre became Shakspeare at once, on emigrating to England, and the 'Immortal Williams,' recognizing the advantages to a poor man of living in a country where only the guineas dance, took up his abode there and made the music for the money to jump into his pockets.'

'Very ingenious. But in relation to Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and--as we are in Italy--Rogers?'

'_Mon ami_, if you seriously prefer ice-cream and trifle to venison and _dindon aux truffes_, choose. If either one of the four poets--I do not include Rogers among poets--ever conceived in his mind, and then produced on paper, a work, composed from his memory, of things terrible in nature, more sublime than Dante's _Inferno_, I will grant you that he had _esprit_ and imagination; otherwise, not. It is of the English as a nation, however, that I make my broad and sweeping assertion, one that was fixed in my mind yesterday, when I saw a well-dressed and well-_educated_ Englishman deliberately pick up a stone, knock off the head of a figure carved on a sarcophagus, found in one of those newly-discovered tombs on the Via Latina, and put the broken head in his pocket.... What man, with one grain of _esprit_ or imagination in his head, would mutilate a work of ancient art, solely that he might possess a piece of stone, when memory had already placed the entire work forever in his mind. _Basta_! enough. Look at the effect of the sunlight on the Albanian mountains. How proudly Mount Gennaro towers over the desolate Campagna! Hallo! Von Bluhmen down there is in trouble. Come along.'

Throwing down his umbrella, under which he had been sitting in the shade, Rocjean grasped the iron-pointed shaft, into which the handle of the umbrella fitted, and, accompanied by Caper, rushed to the rescue of the German. It was none too soon. While sketching, a shepherd, with a very large flock of sheep, had gradually approached nearer and nearer the spot where the artist was sitting at his task; his dogs, eight or ten in number, fierce, shaggy, white and black beasts, with slouching gait and pointed ears and noses, followed near him. As Von Bluhmen paid no attention to them, the shepherd had wandered off; but one or two of his dogs hung back, and the artist, dropping a pencil, suddenly stooped to pick it up, when one of the savage creatures, thinking or 'instincting' that a stone was coming at him, rushed in, with loud barking, to make mince-meat of the German noble. He seized his camp-stool, and kept the dog at bay; but in a moment the whole pack were down on him. Just at this instant, in rushed Rocjean, staff in hand, beating the beasts right and left, and shouting to the shepherd, who was but a short distance off, to call off his dogs. But the _pecorajo_, evidently a cross-grained fellow, only blackguarded the artists, until Rocjean, whose blood was up, swore if he did not call them off, he would shoot them, pulling a revolver from his pocket and aiming at the most savage dog as he spoke. The shepherd only blackguarded him the more, and, just as the dog grabbed him by the pantaloons, Rocjean pulled the trigger, and with foaming jaws and blood pouring from his mouth, the dog fell dead at his feet. The shot scared the other dogs, who fled, tails under. The shepherd ran for the entrance of a cave, and came out in a minute with a single-barreled gun: coming down to within twenty feet of Rocjean, he cocked it, and taking aim, screamed out: 'Give me ten _scudi_ for that dog, or I fire.'

'Do you see that pistol?' said Rocjean to the shepherd, while he held up his revolver, 'I have five loads in it yet.' And then advancing straight toward him, with death in his eyes, he told him to throw down his gun, or he was a dead man.... Down fell the gun. Rocjean picked it up. 'To-morrow,' said he, 'inquire of the chief of police in Rome for this gun and for the ten _scudi_!'

They were never called for.

'You see,' said Caper, as, shortly after this little excitement, the one-horse vetturo, bearing Cæsar and his fortunes, hove in sight, and they entered and returned to Rome; 'you see how charming it is to sketch on the Campagna.'

'Very,' replied Von Bluhmen; 'but, my dear Rocjean, how long were you in America?'

'Twelve years.'

'_Main Gott!_ they were not wasted.'

BACCHUS IN ROME.

It is not at all astonishing that a god who was born to the tune of Jove's thunderbolts, should have escaped scot-free from the thunders of the Vatican, and should prove at the present time one of the strongest opponents to the latter kind of fire-works. We read, in the work of that learned Jesuit, Galtruchius, that--

'Bacchus was usually painted with a mitre upon his head, an ornament proper to Women. He never had other Priests but Satyrs and Women; because the latter had followed him in great Companies in his Journeys, crying, singing, and dancing continually. Titus Livius relates a strange story of the Festivals of Bacchus in Rome. Three times in a year, the Women of all qualities met in a Grove called Simila, and there acted all sorts of Villainies; those that appeared most reserved were sacrificed to Bacchus; and that the cries of the ravished Creatures might not be heard, they did howl, sing, and run up and down with lighted Torches.'

The May and October Festivals in Rome, at present, are substituted for the Bacchanalian orgies, and are, of course, not so objectionable, in many particulars, as the ancient ceremonies; still, no stranger in Rome, at these times, should neglect to attend them. Caper entered Rome at night, during the October festival, and the carriage-loads of Roman women, waving torches and singing tipsily, forcibly reminded him that the Bacchante still lived, and only needed a very little encouragement to revive their ancient rites in full.

Sentimental travelers tell you that the Romans are a temperate people--they have never seen the people. They have never seen the delight that reigns in the heart of the _plebs_, when they learn that the vintage has been good, and that good wine will be sold in Rome for three or four cents _la foglietta_, (about a pint, American measure.) They have never visited the _spacii di vini_, the wine-shops; they have never heard of the murders committed when the wine was in and the wit out. None of these things ever appear in the _Giornale di Roma_ or in the _Vero Amico del_ _Popolo_, the only newspapers published in Rome.

'Roman newspapers,' said an intelligent Roman to Caper, 'were invented to conceal the news.'

The first thing that a foreigner does on entering Rome is to originate a derogatory name for the juice of the grape native to the soil, the _vino nostrale_. He calls it, if red wine, red ink, pink cider, red tea; if white wine, balm of gooseberries, blood of turnips, apple-juice, alum-water, and slops for babes; finally ... if not killed off with a fever, from drinking the adulterated foreign wines, spirits, and liqueurs sold in the city, he takes kindly to the Roman wines, and does not worry his great soul about them.

The truth is, that while other nations have done every thing to improve wine-making, Italy follows the same careless way she has done for centuries. Far more attention was bestowed on the grape, too, in ancient times than now; and we read that vineyards were so much cultivated, to the neglect of agriculture, that, under Domitian, an edict forbade the planting of any new vineyards in Italy.