shop, where it was cool and tolerably quiet, and smoked and drank until sunset, having much sport conversing with the amiable villane, who were as comfortably tipsy as their circumstances would permit. At sunset, the Piazza Grande was brilliant with hangings, crimson and gold, and colored tapestry hung from the windows of the surrounding houses. Here the tombola was held, and here the crowd was excited as usual; the lucky ones bearing off the prizes were in such rapturous state of bliss—'one might have stuck pins into them without their feeling it.'
About sunset, Gaetano and Caper saddled their horses, and left the city, striking over the valley to Segni, passing on the road country people mounted on donkeys, or travelling along on foot, nine tenths of whom were vigorously canvassing—the life of Saint Magno?—no, indeed, but the chances of the lottery!
There was to have been the next day, at Anagni, a curious chase of buffaloes, in accordance with some passage in the life of San Magno, as the people said; but, according to Rocjean, more probably some neglected ceremony of the ancient heathens, which the party in power, finding they could not abolish, gracefully tacked on to the back of the protector of the city. These kind of things are done to an alarming extent around Rome; and the Sieur de Rocjean, when he lost his calendar containing the dates of all the festivals, said it was of no importance—he had and excellent Lempriere!
The fifth festival—if you have patience to read about it—was held at Genazzano, and was decidedly the most celebrated one of the season. It came off on the 8th of September, and for costumes, picturesqueness, and general effect, might have been called, to copy from piano literature, Le Songe d'un Artiste.
The town itself looks as if it had just been kicked out of a theatre. Round towers at entrance gates, streets narrow and all up hill, the tiles on the houses running down to see what is going on in the gutter, quaint old houses, gray with time, with latticed windows, queer old doors, a grand old castle in ruins. It is one of the scenes you long so much to see before you come abroad, and which you so seldom find along the Grande Route. Spend a summer in the mountain towns of Italy! among the Volscian mountains or hills—and have your eyes opened.
As Caper entered the gate, the first objects meeting his sight were: a procession of genuine pilgrims, dressed precisely as you see them in Robert le Diable, or Linda di Chamouni, or on the stage generally—long gray robes down to their feet, cocked hats with cockle shells, long wands; some barefoot, some with sandals: on they passed, singing religious songs. Then came the peasantry, all in perfect theatrical harmony, costumes rigidly correct à la Sonnambula. German artists dressed in Sunday clothes à la Der Freyschutz. A café with festoons of lemon-peel hung from window to window—they are not up to this idea in Fra Diavolo. Pretty girls in latticed windows, with red boddices, white sleeves, flowers in their hair—legitimate Italian drama. Crockery-ware in piles—low comedy. A man with a table, Sambuca and Acqua-vita bottles on it, and wee glasses, one cent a drink: melodrama. Fresh oranges and figs, pumpkin-seed and pine cones; a house with mushrooms strung on thread, hanging from window to window—this was not for festival display, but is the common way of the country. Notices of the festa, containing programme of the day, including amusements, ecclesiastical and secular, hung up alongside the stands where they were selling lottery tickets—tragedy. Fountains, with groups of peasantry drinking, or watering horses and donkeys—pantomime. Priests, in crow-black raiment, and canal-boat or shovel hats—mystery. Strangers from Rome, in the negro-minstrel style of costume, if young men; or in the rotund-paunch and black-raiment dress, if elderly men; or in the chiffonée style, if Roman women attempting the last Parisian fashion—farce.
Here are the booths with rosaries, crucifixes, Virgin Mary's holy-water holders, medals of Pio Nono, or jewelry; gold crescent earrings, spadine (long silver hair pins); silver hearts, legs, arms, for votive offerings, and crosses without number.
Caper entered the church; it was filled, and stifling with heat and frankincense, and contadini, and wax lights burning before the shrine, on which the sun shone. There were beautiful faces among the pajine (people in fine raiment), showing what can be made from the contadine (people in coarse clothes) by not overworking them.
Once more our artist was in the pure air, and, walking up the main street, came to a house with a beautifully carved stone window, half Byzantine, half Gothic, while a house on the opposite side of the street boasted of two other windows finely carved. While looking at them, Caper was hailed by name, and a stout, fresh-colored English artist, named Wardor, whom he had known in Rome, came over and welcomed him to Genazzano. Wardor, it turned out, was spending the summer there, as he had done the year before; consequently, there was not a nook or corner in the old town he did not know; and if he had not been so lazy, he could have filled his sketch book with a hundred picturesque studies. But no; with the keenest appreciation of every bit of color, every graceful pose of a human figure, every beautiful face, every fine effect of light or shadow—he made no sign. His legitimate function was friendly guide to the stranger, and in this office he carried Caper all over the old castle, out to the long shady walk on the esplanade behind it, pointed out beautiful views over the valley; finally, showing Caper his studio, which, as it was a large room, and his padrona could impose on his good nature, was fairly glittering with copper pans, hung on the walls when not in use in the kitchen. On an easel was a painting, to be called The King of the Campagna; all that was apparent was the head and horns of the king. Wardor had thus actually spent three mouths painting on a space not so large as your fist, while the canvas was at least three feet by two feet and a half. But the king, a buffalo, would be a regal figure, for the head was life itself.
Caper proposed finishing a bottle of wine with Wardor, in honor of the day; so the latter piloted him up street and then down a flight of steps to a quiet wine-shop, where, sitting on a shady terrace, they could calmly enjoy the lovely landscape spread below them, and look over the town, over the valley, to far-away Segni high up in the Volscians. The landlord's wife, a buxom, comely woman, in full holiday costume, brought them a flask of cool wine and glasses, presenting them at the same time with a couple of very large sweet apples, the largest of which was thirteen inches in circumference by actual measurement. So you see they have apples as well as oranges in Italy; only, apples are practical, so they are generally omitted in the poetical descriptions of the blue-skyed land.
Caper and Wardor dined together in a very crowded inn, where the maccaroni must have been cooked by the ton, to judge of the sized dish the two artists were presented with—and which they finished! Chickens, lamb chops, salad, and two flasks of wine at last satisfied them. When they left the table, Wardor proposed their calling on a Roman family, who were spending the summer in the town. They found the house they occupied crowded with guests, who, having finished dinner, were busily employed dancing to the music of two guitars and a flute; that is, the younger part of them, while the elders applauded vociferously, entering into the amusement with a reckless spirit of fun and good nature, which people who have to keep shady nine tenths of the year for fear of their rulers, are very apt to indulge in the remaining tenth.
Elisa, the daughter of the Roman family, received Caper with hearty welcome, chiding him for having been all summer at Segni, and yet not coming near them, and entreating him to come to Genazzano and make them a long visit. She introduced him at once to her affianced husband, a handsome young doctor of the town, a man of sterling ability and sound common sense, who very soon made Caper at home, insisted on his dancing the Tarantella and Saltarella Napolitana with a lively, lithe young lady, who cut our artist's heart to fiddlestrings before they had danced five minutes together a polka—for let the truth be told, Caper never could dance the Tarantella.
Wardor, in the meantime, had been led off in triumph to a side-table, and was making a very hearty second dinner; he not having force of mind enough to do like Caper and refuse a good offer! Caper had to drink a few tumblers (not wine-glasses) of wine, and found it beneficial in dancing. It may be as well to repeat here, in order to calm all apprehensions of our artist being a hard drinker, that all these wines around Rome, with few exceptions, are little stronger than mild sweet
