exclusively on salad. They make salads not only of every kind of vegetable, but of bread, nuts and sponge-cakes. If the Marchesina by any accident ever set herself on fire, I feel assured that she would blaze like a beacon, from the quantity of oil she imbibes. Both the ladies keep me company in my studio, because I have got a chafing-dish of charcoal in it to preserve me from freezing, and they like to be economical in point of fire. But, besides my fire, they have their own, which they carry in their laps. An earthenware pipkin a-piece, with an arched handle, and with a small provision of burning charcoal in it, is the extraordinary portable fire that they hold on their knees all day long. I suspect the Marchesina of having a second pipkin full of live charcoal, under her robes, for the purpose of warming her feet and so forth. But of this I am not yet certain.
29th—The mighty Marchesina has proposed a subject to me to paint—a life-size portrait of herself in the character of a Sibyl. Ah, merciful Heaven! I must have another huge canvas for this! It will be another “Polycarp,” in female form! More getting up and down steps! More gallons of black paint! But I must submit. The Marchesina has been hitherto very kind, sometimes even alarmingly affectionate. Nevertheless, if I oppose, or neglect her, I feel perfectly certain that she is capable of knocking me down!—Why! why did I ever come to Italy?
January 1st—I mark this day’s entry with red ink. The new year has begun for me with one of the most outstanding adventures that ever happened to anybody—Baron Munchausen included. Let me note it down in these pages.
I had just begun this morning to make a sketch for the future Sibyl picture, when the Sibyl herself burst into my studio in a great hurry. She had her bonnet on; and was dressed for the first time, since I had seen her, in something which really looked like a petticoat.
“Industrious little man,” said the Marchesina, with an air of jocular authority, “put on your hat, and come out with me.”
Of course I obeyed directly. We were going to the nunnery church of Santa So-and-so (I am afraid of being prosecuted for libel if I write the real name), to see the live object of the last new miracle, which had set all Florence in an uproar of astonishment and admiration. This object was a poor man who had been miraculously restored from blindness, by praying to a certain statue of the Madonna. He had only pursued his devotions for two days, when he was “cured in an instant,” like the man with the toothache, on the outside cover of a certain quack medicine bottle, that I remember in England. Besides gaining his sight, he gained a great deal of money, subscribed for him by the devout rich. He was exhibited every day in the church; and it was the great sight of Florence to go and see him.
Well! we got to the church. Such a scene inside! Crowds of people; soldiers in full uniform to keep order; the organ thundering sublimely; the choir singing hosannas; clouds of incense floating through the church; devotees, some kneeling, some prostrate on their faces, wherever they could find room,—all the magnificence of the magnificent Roman Catholic worship, was displayed before us in its grandest festival garb. My companion was right, this was a sight worth seeing indeed.
The Marchesina being a person of some weight, both in respect of physical formation and social standing, made her way victoriously through the crowd, dragging me after her in triumph. At the inner extremity of the church we saw the wonder-working statue of the Madonna, raised on high, and profusely decorated with the jewels presented to it by the faithful. To get a view of the man on whom the miracle had been wrought was, however, by no means easy. He was closely surrounded by a circle of gazers five deep. ere, long, however, the indomitable Marchesina contrived to force her way and mine through every obstacle. We reached the front row, I looked eagerly under a tall man’s elbow; and saw—
Portentous powers of scoundrelism and hypocrisy! It was—yes! there was no mistaking him—it was POLYCARP THE SECOND!!!
I never really knew what it was to doubt my own eyes before; and yet there was no doubt here. There, kneeling beneath the statue of the Madonna, in an elegant pose of adoration, was my wide-awake miscreant of a model, changed to the hero of the most fashionable miracle of the day. The tears were trickling over his villainous beard, exactly as they trickled in my studio; I just detected the smell of garlic faintly predominant over the smell of incense, as I used to detect it at Rome. My sham model had turned sham blind man to all Florence, sham miracle-subject to a convent of illustrious nuns. The fellow had reached the sublime acme of rascality at a single stride.
The shock of my first recognition of him deprived me of my presence of mind. I forgot where I was, forgot all the people present, and unconsciously uttered aloud our national English ejaculation of astonishment, “Hullo!” The spectators in my neighbourhood all turned round upon me immediately. A priest among the number beckoned to a soldier standing near, and said, “Remove the British heretic.” This was rather too violent a proceeding to be patiently borne. I was determined to serve the cause of truth, and avenge myself on Polycarp the Second at the same time.
“Sir,” said I to the priest, “before I am taken away, I should like to speak in private to the lady abbess of this convent.”
“Remove the heretic!” reiterated the furious bigot.
“Remove the heretic!” echoed the indignant congregation.
“If you do remove me,” I continued resolutely, “without first granting what I ask, I will publicly proclaim, before you can get me out at the door of the church, a certain fact which you would give the best jewel on that statue up there to keep concealed. Will you let me see the abbess, or will you not?”
My naturally limpid and benevolent eye must have flashed lightnings of wrath as I spoke, my usually calm and mellow voice must have sounded like a clarion of defiance; for the priest suddenly changed his tactics. He signed to the soldier to let me go.
“The Englishman is mad; and must be managed by persuasion, not force,” said the wily churchman to the congregation.
“He is not mad,—he is only a genius,” exclaimed my gigantic and generous Marchesina, taking my part.
“Leave him to me, and hold your peace, all of you,” said the priest, taking my arm, and leading me quickly out of the crowd.
He showed me into a little room behind the body of the church: shut the door carefully, and turning quickly and fiercely on me, said:
“Now, you fanatic of an Englishman, what do you want?”
“Bigot of an Italian!” I answered in rage, “I want to prove your miracle man there, to be a thief and impostor. I know him. He was no more blind, when he came to Florence, than I am.”
The priest turned ghastly with rage, and opened his mouth to speak again, when, by a second door at the other end of the room, in came the abbess herself.
She tried at first the same plan as the priest. I never saw a fiercer, leaner, sharper old woman in my life. But bullying me would not do. I knew I was right: and stuck manfully to my point. After stating the whole of the great Polycarp robbery case, I wound up brilliantly by announcing my intention of sending to Rome for witnesses who could prove the identity of my thief of a model, and their sham of a miracle man, beyond the possibility of refutation. This threat conquered; the abbess got frightened in real earnest, and came to terms; or, in other words, began to humbug me on the spot.
In the course of my life I have known a great many wily old women. The tart-seller at school was a wily old woman; a maternal aunt of mine, who wheedled my father out of a special legacy, was a wily old woman; the laundress I employed in London was a wily old woman; the Marchioness I now lodge with is a wily old woman; but the abbess was wilier than all four put together. She flattered and cringed, lamented and shed tears, prayed for me and to me, all in a breath. Even the magnificent
