CASA ROSA, _May_ 18.
Such a fanfare of bells as greeted our ears on the morning of our first
awakening in Casa Rosa!
“Rise at once and dress quickly, Salemina!” I said. “Either an heir has
been born to the throne, or a foreign Crown Prince has come to visit
Venice, or perhaps a Papal Bull is loose in the Piazza San Marco.
Whatever it is, we must not miss it, as I am keeping a diary.”
But Peppina entered with a jug of hot water, and assured us that there
were no more bells than usual; so we lay drowsily in our comfortable
little beds, gazing at the frescoes on the ceiling.
One difficulty about the faithful study of Italian frescoes is that they
can never be properly viewed unless one is extended at full-length on the
flat of one’s honourable back (as they might say in Japan), a position
not suitable in a public building.
The fresco on my bedroom ceiling is made mysteriously attractive by a
wilderness of mythologic animals and a crowd of cherubic heads, wings and
legs, on a background of clouds; the mystery being that the number of
cherubic heads does not correspond with the number of extremities, one or
two cherubs being a wing or a leg short. Whatever may be their
limitations in this respect, the old painters never denied their cherubs
cheek, the amount of adipose tissue uniformly provided in that quarter
being calculated to awake envy and jealousy on the part of the
predigested-food-babies pictured in the American magazine advertisements.
Padrona Angela furnishes no official key to the ceiling-paintings of Casa
Rosa; and yesterday, during the afternoon call of four pretty American
girls, they asked and obtained our permission to lie upon the marble
floor and compete for a prize to be given to the person who should offer
the cleverest interpretation of the symbolisms in the frescoes. It may
be stated that the entire difference of opinion proved that mythologic
art is apt to be misunderstood. After deciding in the early morning what
our bedroom ceiling is intended to represent (a decision made and unmade
every day since our arrival), Salemina and I make a leisurely toilet and
then seat ourselves at one of the open windows for breakfast.
The window itself looks on the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile, St.
Theodore and the Lion of St. Mark’s being visible through a maze of
fishing-boats and sails, some of these artistically patched in white and
yellow blocks, or orange and white stripes, while others of grey have
smoke-coloured figures in the tops and corners.
Sometimes the broad stone-flagging pavement bordering the canal is busy
with people: gondoliers, boys with nets for crab-catching, ’longshoremen,
and _facchini_. This is when ships are loading or unloading, but at
other times we look upon a tranquil scene.
Peppina brings in _dell’ acqua bollente_, and I make the coffee in the
little copper coffee-pot we bought in Paris, while Salemina heats the
milk over the alcohol-lamp, which is the most precious treasure in her
possession.
The butter and eggs are brought every morning before breakfast, and
nothing is more delicious than our freshly churned pat of solidified
cream, without salt, which is sweeter than honey in the comb. The cows
are milked at dawn on the campagna, and the milk is brought into Venice
in large cans. In the early morning, when the light is beginning to
steal through the shutters, one hears the tinkling of a mule’s bell and
the rattling of the milk-cans, and, if one runs to the window, may see
the _contadini_, looking, in their sheepskin trousers, like brethren of
John the Baptist, driving through the streets and delivering the milk at
the _vaccari_. It is then heated, the cream raised and churned, and the
pats of butter, daintily set on green leaves, delivered for a
seven-o’clock breakfast.
Finally _la colazione_ is spread on our table by the window. A neat
white cloth covers it, and we have gold-rimmed plates and cups of
delicate china. There is a pot of honey, an egg _à la coque_ for each, a
plate of brown and white bread, on some days a dish of scarlet cherries
on a bed of green, on others a mound of luscious berries in their frills;
sometimes, too, we have a bowl of tiny wild strawberries that seem to
have grown with their faces close pressed to the flowers, so sweet and
fragrant are they.
This _al fresco_ morning meal makes a delicious prelude to our
comfortable _déjeuner à la fourchette_ at one o’clock, when the Little
Genius, if not absorbed in some unusually exacting piece of work, joins
us and gives zest to the repast. Her own breakfast, she explains, is a
_déjeuner à la_ thumb, the sort enjoyed by the peasant who carves a bit
of bread and cheese in his hand, and she promises us a sight, some
leisure day, of a certain _déjeuner à la_ toothpick celebrated for the
moment among the artists. A mysterious painter, shabby, but of a certain
elegance and distinction even in his poverty, comes daily at noon into a
well-known restaurant. He buys for five sous a glass of chianti, a roll
for one sou, and with stately grace bestows another sou upon the waiter
who serves him. These preparations made, he breaks the roll in small
bits, and poising them delicately on the point of a wooden toothpick, he
dips them in wine before eating them.
“This may be a frugal repast,” he has an air of saying, “but it is at
least refined, and no man would dare insult me by asking me whether or
not I leave the table satisfied.”