CASA ROSA, _May_ 30.
We have had a battle royal in Casa Rosa—a battle over the breaking of a
huge blue pitcher valued at eight francs, a pitcher belonging to the
Little Genius.
The room that leads from the dining-room to the kitchen is reached by the
descent of two or three stone steps. It is always full, and is like the
orthodox hell in one respect, that though myriads of people are seen to
go into it, none ever seem to come out. It is not more than twelve feet
square, and the persons most continuously in it, not counting those who
are in transit, are the Padrona Angela; the Padrona Angela’s daughter,
Signorina Rita; the Signorina Rita’s temporary suitor; the suitor’s
mother and cousin; the padrona’s great-aunt; a few casual acquaintances
of the two families, and somebody’s baby: not always the same baby; any
baby answers the purpose and adds to the confusion and chatter of
tongues.
This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I heard a subdued
sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to the scene of
action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in the centre of the
floor. I glanced at the excited company, but there was nothing to show
me who was the criminal. There was a spry girl washing dishes; the
fritter-woman (at least we call her so, because she brings certain
goodies called, if I mistake not, _frittoli_); the gardener’s wife;
Angelo, the gondolier; Peppina, the waiting-maid; and the men that had
just brought the sausages and sweetmeats for the gondolier’s ball, which
we were giving in the evening. There was also the contralto, with a
large soup-ladle in her hand. (We now call Rosalia, the cook, “the
contralto,” because she sings so much better than she cooks that it seems
only proper to distinguish her in the line of her special talent.)
The assembled company were all talking and gesticulating at once. There
was a most delicate point of justice involved, for, as far as I could
gather, the sweetmeat-man had come in unexpectedly and collided with the
sausage-man, thereby startling the fritter-woman, who turned suddenly and
jostled the spry girl: hence the pile of broken china.
The spry girl was all for justice. If she had carelessly or wilfully
dropped the pitcher, she would have been willing to suffer the extreme
penalty,—the number of saints she called upon to witness this statement
was sufficient to prove her honesty,—but under the circumstances she
would be blessed if she suffered anything, even the abuse that filled the
air. The fritter-woman upbraided the sweetmeat-man, who in return
reviled the sausage-vender, who remarked that if Angelo or Peppina had
received the sausages at the door, as they should, he would never have
been in the house at all; adding a few picturesque generalizations
concerning the moral turpitude of Angelo’s parents and the vicious nature
of their offspring.
The contralto, who was divided in her soul, being betrothed to the
sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena, armed
with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all sides. The feud now
reached its height. There is nothing that the chief participants did not
call one another, and no intimation or aspersion concerning the
reputation of ancestors to the remotest generation that was not cast in
the others’ teeth. The spry girl referred to the sausage-vender as a
_generalissimo_ of all the fiends, and the compliments concerning the
gentle art of cookery which flew between the fritter-woman and the
contralto will not bear repetition. I listened breathlessly, hoping to
hear one of the party refer to somebody as the figure of a pig (strangely
enough the most unforgettable of insults), for each of the combatants
held, suspended in air, the weapon of his choice—broken crockery,
soup-ladle, rolling-pin, or sausage. Each, I say, flourished the emblem
of his craft wildly in the air—and then, with a change of front like that
of the celebrated King of France in the Mother Goose rhyme, dropped it
swiftly and silently; for at this juncture the Little Genius flew down
the broad staircase from her eagle’s nest. Her sculptor’s smock
surmounted her blue cotton gown, and her blond hair was flying in the
breeze created by her rapid descent. I wish I could affirm that by her
gentle dignity and serene self-control she awed the company into silence,
or that there was a holy dignity about her that held them spellbound; but
such, unhappily, is not the case. It was her pet blue pitcher that had
been broken—the pitcher that was to serve as just the right bit of colour
at the evening’s feast. She took command of the situation in a masterly
manner—a manner that had American energy and decision as its foundation
and Italian fluency as its superstructure. She questioned the virtue of
no one’s ancestors, cast no shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of any
one’s posterity, called no one by the name of any four-footed beast or
crawling, venomous thing, yet she somehow brought order out of chaos.
Her language (for which she would have been fined thirty days in her
native land) charmed and enthralled the Venetians by its delicacy,
reserve, and restraint, and they dispersed pleasantly. The
sausage-vender wished good appetite to the cook,—she had need of it,
Heaven knows, and we had more,—while the spry girl embraced the
fritter-woman ardently, begging her to come in again soon and make a
longer visit.