"They must have blood, though," said Herr Hippe, as he gathered them up

and put them into their box. "Mr. Pippel, the bird-fancier, is asleep. I

have a key that opens his door. We will let them loose among the birds;

it will be rare fun."

"Magnificent!" cried Kerplonne. "Let us go on the instant. But first let

me gather up my eye."

The Frenchman pocketed his eye, after having given it a polish with the

silk handkerchief; Herr Hippe extinguished the lamp; Oaksmith took a

last bumper of Port; and the four gypsies departed for Mr. Pippel's,

carrying the box of manikins with them.

III.

SOLON.

The shadow that glided along the dark corridor, at the moment that

Monsieur Kerplonne deposited his sentinel eye outside the door of the

Wondersmith's apartment, sped swiftly through the passage and ascended

the stairs to the attic. Here the shadow stopped at the entrance to one

of the chambers and knocked at the door. There was no reply.

"Zonéla, are you asleep?" said the shadow, softly.

"Oh, Solon, is it you?" replied a sweet low voice from within. "I

thought it was Herr Hippe. Come in."

The shadow opened the door and entered. There were neither candles nor

lamp in the room; but through the projecting window, which was open,

there came the faint gleams of the starlight, by which one could

distinguish a female figure seated on a low stool in the middle of the

floor.

"Has he left you without light again, Zonéla?" asked the shadow, closing

the door of the apartment. "I have brought my little lantern with me,

though."

"Thank you, Solon," answered she called Zonéla; "you are a good fellow.

He never gives me any light of an evening, but bids me go to bed. I like

to sit sometimes and look at the moon and the stars,--the stars more

than all; for they seem all the time to look right back into my face,

very sadly, as if they would say, 'We see you, and pity you, and would

help you, if we could.' But it is so mournful to be always looking at

such myriads of melancholy eyes! and I long so to read those nice books

that you lend me, Solon!"

By this time the shadow had lit the lantern and was a shadow no longer.

A large head, covered with a profusion of long blonde hair, which was

cut after that fashion known as a _l'enfants d'Edouard;_ a beautiful

pale face, lit with wide, blue, dreamy eyes; long arms and slender

hands, attenuated legs, and--an enormous hump;--such was Solon, the

shadow. As soon as the humpback had lit the lamp, Zonéla arose from

the low stool on which she had been seated, and took Solon's hand

affectionately in hers.

Zonéla was surely not of gypsy blood. That rich auburn hair, that looked

almost black in the lamp-light, that pale, transparent skin, tinged with

an under-glow of warm rich blood, the hazel eyes, large and soft as

those of a fawn, were never begotten of a Zingaro. Zonéla was seemingly

about sixteen; her figure, although somewhat thin and angular, was full

of the unconscious grace of youth. She was dressed in an old cotton

print, which had been once of an exceedingly boisterous pattern, but

was now a mere suggestion of former splendor; while round her head was

twisted, in fantastic fashion, a silk handkerchief of green ground

spotted with bright crimson. This strange headdress gave her an elfish

appearance.

"I have been out all day with the organ, and I am so tired, Solon!--not

sleepy, but weary, I mean. Poor Furbelow was sleepy, though, and he's

gone to bed."

"I'm weary, too, Zonéla;--not weary as you are, though, for I sit in my

little book-stall all day long, and do not drag round an organ and a

monkey and play old tunes for pennies,--but weary of myself, of life, of

the load that I carry on my shoulders"; and, as he said this, the poor

humpback glanced sideways, as if to call attention to his deformed

person.

"Well, but you ought not to be melancholy amidst your books, Solon.

Gracious! If I could only sit in the sun and read as you do, how happy

I should be! But it's very tiresome to trudge round all day with that

nasty organ, and look up at the houses, and know that you are annoying

the people inside; and then the boys play such bad tricks on poor

Furbelow, throwing him hot pennies to pick up, and burning his poor

little hands; and oh! sometimes, Solon, the men in the street make me

so afraid,--they speak to me and look at me so oddly!--I'd a great deal

rather sit in your book-stall and read."

"I have nothing but odd volumes in my stall," answered the humpback.

"Perhaps that's right, though; for, after all, I'm nothing but an odd

volume myself."

"Come, don't be melancholy, Solon. Sit down and tell me a story. I'll

bring Furbelow to listen."

So saying, she went to a dusk corner of the cheerless attic-room, and

returned with a little Brazilian monkey in her arms,--a poor, mild,

drowsy thing, that looked as if it had cried itself to sleep. She sat

down on her little stool, with Furbelow in her lap, and nodded her head

to Solon, as much as to say, "Go on; we are attentive."

"You want a story, do you?" said the humpback, with a mournful smile.

"Well, I'll tell you one. Only what will your father say, if he catches

me here?"

"Herr Hippe is not my father," cried Zonéla, indignantly. "He's a gypsy,

and I know I'm stolen; and I'd run away from him, if I only knew where

to run to. If I were his child, do you think that he would treat me

as he does? make me trudge round the city, all day long, with

a barrel-organ and a monkey,--though I love poor dear little

Furbelow,--and keep me up in a garret, and give me ever so little to

eat? I know I'm not his child, for he hates me."

"Listen to my story, Zonéla, and well talk of that afterwards. Let me

sit at your feet";--and, having coiled himself up at the little maiden's

feet, he commenced:--

"There once lived in a great city, just like this city of New York, a

poor little hunchback. He kept a second-hand book-stall, where he made

barely enough money to keep body and soul together. He was very sad at

times, because he knew scarce any one, and those that he did know did

not love him. He had passed a sickly, secluded youth. The children of

his neighborhood would not play with him, for he was not made like them;

and the people in the streets stared at him with pity, or scoffed at

him when he went by. Ah! Zonéla, how his poor heart was wrung with

bitterness when he beheld the procession of shapely men and fine women

that every day passed him by in the thoroughfares of the great city! How

he repined and cursed his fate as the torrent of fleet-footed firemen

dashed past him to the toll of the bells, magnificent in their

overflowing vitality and strength! But there was one consolation left

him,--one drop of honey in the jar of gall, so sweet that it ameliorated

all the bitterness of life. God had given him a deformed body, but his

mind was straight and healthy. So the poor hunchback shut himself into

the world of books, and was, if not happy, at least contented. He kept

company with courteous paladins, and romantic heroes, and beautiful

women; and this society was of such excellent breeding that it never so

much as once noticed his poor crooked back or his lame walk. The love

of books grew upon him with his years. He was remarked for his studious

habits; and when, one day, the obscure people that he called father and

mother--parents only in name--died, a compassionate book-vendor gave

him enough stock in trade to set up a little stall of his own. Here, in

his book-stall, he sat in the sun all day, waiting for the customers

that seldom came, and reading the fine deeds of the people of the

ancient time, or the beautiful thoughts of the poets that had warmed

millions of hearts before that hour, and still glowed for him with

undiminished fire. One day, when he was reading some book, that, small

as it was, was big enough to shut the whole world out from him, he heard

some music in the street. Looking up from his book, he saw a little

girl, with large eyes, playing an organ, while a monkey begged for alms

from a crowd of idlers who had nothing in their pockets but their hands.

The girl was playing, but she was also weeping. The merry notes of the

polka were ground out to a silent accompaniment of tears. She looked

very sad, this organ-girl, and her monkey seemed to have caught the

infection, for his large brown eyes were moist, as if he also wept. The

poor hunchback was struck with pity, and called the little girl over to

give her a penny,--not, dear Zonéla, because he wished to bestow alms,

but because he wanted to speak with her. She came, and they talked

together. She came the next day,--for it turned out that they were

neighbors,--and the next, and, in short, every day. They became friends.

They were both lonely and afflicted, with this difference, that she was

beautiful, and he--was a hunchback."

"Why, Solon," cried Zonéla, "that's the very way you and I met!"

"It was then," continued Solon, with a faint smile, "that life seemed to

have its music. A great harmony seemed to the poor cripple to fill the

world. The carts that took the flour-barrels from the wharves to the

store-houses seemed to emit joyous melodies from their wheels. The hum

of the great business-streets sounded like grand symphonies of triumph.

As one who has been travelling through a barren country without much

heed feels with singular force the sterility of the lands he has passed

through when he reaches the fertile plains that lie at the end of his

journey, so the humpback, after his vision had been freshened with this

blooming flower, remembered for the first time the misery of the life

that he had led. But he did not allow himself to dwell upon the past.

The present was so delightful that it occupied all his thoughts. Zonéla,

he was in love with the organ-girl."

"Oh, that's so nice!" said Zonéla, innocently,--pinching poor Furbelow,

as she spoke, in order to dispel a very evident snooze that was creeping

over him. "It's going to be a love-story."

"Ah! but, Zonéla, he did not know whether she loved him in return. You

forget that he was deformed."

"But," answered the girl, gravely, "he was good."

A light like the flash of an aurora illuminated Solon's face for an

instant. He put out his hand suddenly, as if to take Zonéla's and press

it to his heart; but an unaccountable timidity seemed to arrest the

impulse, and he only stroked Furbelow's head,--upon which that

individual opened one large brown eye to the extent of the eighth of an

inch, and, seeing that it was only Solon, instantly closed it again, and

resumed his dream of a city where there were no organs and all the

copper coin of the realm was iced.

"He hoped and feared," continued Solon, in a low, mournful voice; "but

at times he was very miserable, because he did not think it possible

that so much happiness was reserved for him as the love of this

beautiful, innocent girl. At night, when he was in bed, and all the

world was dreaming, he lay awake looking up at the old books that hung

against the walls, thinking how he could bring about the charming of her

heart. One night, when he was thinking of this, with his eyes fixed

upon the mouldy backs of the odd volumes that lay on their shelves, and

looked back at him wistfully, as if they would say,--'We also are like

you, and wait to be completed,'--it seemed as if he heard a rustle of

leaves. Then, one by one, the books came down from their places to the

floor, as if shifted by invisible hands, opened their worm-eaten covers,

and from between the pages of each the hunchback saw issue forth a

curious throng of little people that danced here and there through the

apartment. Each one of these little creatures was shaped so as to bear

resemblance to some one of the letters of the alphabet. One tall,

long-legged fellow seemed like the letter A; a burly fellow, with a big

head and a paunch, was the model of B; another leering little chap might

have passed for a Q; and so on through the whole. These fairies--for

fairies they were--climbed upon the hunchback's bed, and clustered thick

as bees upon his pillow. 'Come!' they cried to him, 'we will lead you

into fairy-land.' So saying, they seized his hand, and he suddenly found

himself in a beautiful country, where the light did not come from sun

or moon or stars, but floated round and over and in everything like the

atmosphere. On all sides he heard mysterious melodies sung by strangely

musical voices. None of the features of the landscape were definite;

yet when he looked on the vague harmonies of color that melted one into

another before his sight, he was filled with a sense of inexplicable

beauty. On every side of him fluttered radiant bodies which darted to

and fro through the illumined space. They were not birds, yet they flew

like birds; and as each one crossed the path of his vision, he felt a

strange delight flash through his brain, and straightway an interior

voice seemed to sing beneath the vaulted dome of his temples a verse

containing some beautiful thought. The little fairies were all this

time dancing and fluttering around him, perching on his head, on his

shoulders, or balancing themselves on his finger-tips. 'Where am I?' he

asked, at last, of his friends, the fairies. 'Ah! Solon,' he heard them

whisper, in tones that sounded like the distant tinkling of silver

bells, 'this land is nameless; but those whom we lead hither, who tread

its soil, and breathe its air, and gaze on its floating sparks of light,

are poets forevermore!' Having said this, they vanished, and with

them the beautiful indefinite land, and the flashing lights, and the

illumined air; and the hunchback found himself again in bed, with the

moonlight quivering on the floor, and the dusty books on their shelves,

grim and mouldy as ever."

"You have betrayed yourself. You called yourself Solon," cried Zonéla.

"Was it a dream?"

"I do not know," answered Solon; "but since that night I have been a

poet."

"A poet?" screamed the little organ-girl,--"a real poet, who makes

verses which every one reads and every one talks of?"

"The people call me a poet," answered Solon, with a sad smile. "They do

not know me by the name of Solon, for I write under an assumed title;

but they praise me, and repeat my songs. But, Zonéla, I can't sing this

load off of my back, can I?"

"Oh, bother the hump!" said Zonéla, jumping up suddenly. "You're a poet,

and that's enough, isn't it? I'm so glad you're a poet, Solon! You must

repeat all your best things to me, won't you?"

Solon nodded assent.

"You don't ask me," he said, "who was the little girl that the hunchback

loved."

Zonela's face flushed crimson. She turned suddenly away, and ran into a

dark corner of the room. In a moment she returned with an old hand-organ

in her arms.

"Play, Solon, play!" she cried. "I am so glad that I want to dance.

Furbelow, come and dance in honor of Solon the Poet."

It was her confession. Solon's eyes flamed, as if his brain had suddenly

ignited. He said nothing; but a triumphant smile broke over his

countenance. Zonela, the twilight of whose cheeks was still rosy with

the setting blush, caught the lazy Furbelow by his little paws; Solon

turned the crank of the organ, which wheezed out as merry a polka as

its asthma would allow, and the girl and the monkey commenced their

fantastic dance. They had taken but a few steps when the door suddenly

opened, and the tall figure of the Wondersmith appeared on the

threshold. His face was convulsed with rage, and the black snake that

quivered on his upper lip seemed to rear itself as if about to spring

upon the hunchback.

IV

THE MANIKINS AND THE MINOS.

The four gypsies left Herr Hippe's house cautiously, and directed their

steps towards Mr. Pippel's bird-shop. Golosh Street was asleep. Nothing

was stirring in that tenebrous slum, save a dog that savagely gnawed a

bone which lay on a dust-heap, tantalizing him with the flavor of food

without its substance. As the gypsies moved stealthily along in the

darkness, they had a sinister and murderous air that would not have

failed to attract the attention of the policeman of the quarter, if

that worthy had not at the moment been comfortably ensconced in the

neighboring "Rainbow" bar-room, listening to the improvisations of that

talented vocalist, Mr. Harrison, who was making impromptu verses on

every possible subject, to the accompaniment of a cithern which was

played by a sad little Italian in a large cloak, to whom the host of the

"Rainbow" gave so many toddies and a dollar for his nightly performance.

Mr. Pippel's shop was but a short distance from the Wondersmith's house.

A few moments, therefore, brought the gypsy party to the door, when, by

aid of a key which Herr Hippe produced, they silently slipped into the

entry. Here the Wondersmith took a dark-lantern from under his cloak,

removed the cap that shrouded the light, and led the way into the shop,

which was separated from the entry only by a glass door, that yielded,

like the outer one, to a key which Hippe took from his pocket. The four

gypsies now entered the shop and closed the door behind them.

It was a little world of birds. On every side, whether in large or small

cages, one beheld balls of various-colored feathers standing on one leg

and breathing peacefully. Love-birds, nestling shoulder to shoulder,

with their heads tucked under their wings and all their feathers puffed

out, so that they looked like globes of malachite; English bullfinches,

with ashen-colored backs, in which their black heads were buried, and

corselets of a rosy down; Java sparrows, fat and sleek and cleanly;

troupials, so glossy and splendid in plumage that they looked as if they

were dressed in the celebrated armor of the Black Prince, which was jet,

richly damascened with gold; a cock of the rock, gleaming, a ball of

tawny fire, like a setting sun; the Campanero of Brazil, white as snow,

with his dilatable tolling-tube hanging from his head, placid and

silent;--these, with a humbler crowd of linnets, canaries, robins,

mocking-birds, and phoebes, slumbered calmly in their little cages, that

were hung so thickly on the wall as not to leave an inch of it visible.

"Splendid little morsels, all of them!" exclaimed Monsieur Kerplonne.

"Ah we are going to have a rare beating!" "So Pippel does not sleep in

his shop," said the English gypsy, Oaksmith.

"No. The fellow lives somewhere up one of the avenues," answered Madame

Filomel. "He came, the other evening, to consult me about his fortune. I

did not tell him," she added, with a laugh, "that he was going to have

so distinguished a sporting party on his premises."

"Come," said the Wondersmith, producing the box of manikins, "get ready

with souls, Madame Filomel. I am impatient to see my little men letting

out lives for the first time."

Just at the moment that the Wondersmith uttered this sentence, the four

gypsies were startled by a hoarse voice issuing from a corner of the

room, and propounding in the most guttural tones the intemperate query

of "What'll you take?" This sottish invitation had scarce been given,

when a second extremely thick voice replied from an opposite corner,

in accents so rough that they seemed to issue from a throat torn and

furrowed by the liquid lava of many bar-rooms, "Brandy and water."

"Hollo! who's here?" muttered Herr Hippe, flashing the light of his

lantern round the shop.

Oaksmith turned up his coat-cuffs, as if to be ready for a fight; Madame

Filomel glided, or rather rolled, towards the door; while Kerplonne put

his hand into his pocket, as if to assure himself that his supernumerary

optic was all right.

"What'll you take?" croaked the voice in the corner, once more.

"Brandy and water," rapidly replied the second voice in the other

corner. And then, as if by a concerted movement, a series of bibular

invitations and acceptances were rolled backwards and forwards with a

volubility of utterance that threw Patter _versus_ Clatter into the

shade.

"What the Devil can it be?" muttered the Wondersmith, flashing his

lantern here and there. "Ah! it is those Minos."

So saying, he stopped under one of the wicker cages that hung high up

on the wall, and raised the lantern above his head, so as to throw the

light upon that particular cage. The hospitable individual who had

been extending all these hoarse invitations to partake of intoxicating

beverages was an inhabitant of the cage. It was a large Mino-bird, who

now stood perched on his cross-bar, with his yellowish orange bill

sloped slightly over his shoulder, and his white eye cocked knowingly

upon the Wondersmith. The respondent voice in the other corner came

from another Mino-bird, who sat in the dusk in a similar cage, also

attentively watching the Wondersmith. These Mino-birds, I may remark, in

passing, have a singular aptitude for acquiring phrases.

"What'll you take?" repeated the Mino, cocking his other eye upon Herr

Hippe.

"_Mon Dieu!_ what a bird!" exclaimed the little Frenchman. "He is, in

truth, polite."

"I don't know what I'll take," said Hippe, as if replying to the

Mino-bird; "but I know what you'll get, old fellow! Filomel, open the

cage-doors, and give me the bottle."

Filomel opened, one after another, the doors of the numberless little

cages, thereby arousing from slumber their feathered occupants, who

opened their beaks, and stretched their claws, and stared with great

surprise at the lantern and the midnight visitors.

By this time the Wondersmith had performed the mysterious manipulations

with the bottle, and the manikins were once more in full motion,

swarming out of their box, sword and dagger in hand, with their little

black eyes glittering fiercely, and their white teeth shining. The

little creatures seemed to scent their prey. The gypsies stood in

the centre of the shop, watching the proceedings eagerly, while the

Liliputians made in a body towards the wall and commenced climbing from

cage to cage. Then was heard a tremendous fluttering of wings, and

faint, despairing "quirks" echoed on all sides. In almost every cage

there was a fierce manikin thrusting his sword or dagger vigorously into

the body of some unhappy bird. It recalled the antique legend of the

battles of the Pygmies and the Cranes. The poor love-birds lay with

their emerald feathers dabbled in their hearts' blood, shoulder to

shoulder in death as in life. Canaries gasped at the bottom of their

cages, while the water in their little glass fountains ran red. The

bullfinches wore an unnatural crimson on their breasts. The mocking-bird

lay on his back, kicking spasmodically, in the last agonies, with a tiny

sword-thrust cleaving his melodious throat in twain, so that from the

instrument which used to gush with wondrous music only scarlet drops of

blood now trickled. The manikins were ruthless. Their faces were ten

times wickeder than ever, as they roamed from cage to cage, slaughtering

with a fury that seemed entirely unappeasable. Presently the feathery

rustlings became fewer and fainter, and the little pipings of despair

died away; and in every cage lay a poor murdered minstrel, with the song

that abode within him forever quenched;--in every cage but two, and

those two were high up on the wall; and in each glared a pair of wild,

white eyes; and an orange beak, tough as steel, pointed threateningly

down. With the needles which they grasped as swords all wet and warm

with blood, and their beadlike eyes flashing in the light of the

lantern, the Liliputian assassins swarmed up the cages in two separate

bodies, until they reached the wickets of the habitations in which the

Minos abode. Mino saw them coming,--had listened attentively to the

many death-struggles of his comrades, and had, in fact, smelt a rat.

Accordingly he was ready for the manikins. There he stood at the

barbican of his castle, with formidable beak couched like a lance. The

manikins made a gallant charge. "What'll you take?" was rattled out

by the Mino, in a deep bass, as with one plunge of his sharp bill he

scattered the ranks of the enemy, and sent three of them flying to the

floor, where they lay with broken limbs. But the manikins were brave

automata, and again they closed and charged the gallant Mino. Again the

wicked white eyes of the bird gleamed, and again the orange bill dealt

destruction. Everything seemed to be going on swimmingly for Mino, when

he found himself attacked in the rear by two treacherous manikins, who

had stolen upon him from behind, through the lattice-work of the cage.

Quick as lightning the Mino turned to repel this assault, but all too

late; two slender quivering threads of steel crossed in his poor body,

and he staggered into a corner of the cage. His white eyes closed, then

opened; a shiver passed over his body, beginning at his shoulder-tips

and dying off in the extreme tips of the wings; he gasped as if for air,

and then, with a convulsive shudder, which ruffled all his feathers,

croaked out feebly his little speech, "What'll you take?" Instantly

from the opposite corner came the old response, still feebler than the

question,--a mere gurgle, as it were, of "Brandy and water." Then all

was silent. The Mino-birds were dead.

"They spill blood like Christians," said the Wondersmith, gazing fondly

on the manikins. "They will be famous assassins."

V.

TIED UP.

Herr Hippe stood in the doorway, scowling. His eyes seemed to scorch the

poor hunchback, whose form, physically inferior, crouched before that

baneful, blazing glance, while his head, mentally brave, reared itself,

as if to redeem the cowardice of the frame to which it belonged. So the

attitude of the serpent: the body pliant, yielding, supple; but the

crest thrown aloft, erect, and threatening. As for Zonéla, she was

frozen in the attitude of motion;--a dancing nymph in colored marble;

agility stunned; elasticity petrified.

Furbelow, astonished at this sudden change, and catching, with all the

mysterious rapidity of instinct peculiar to the lower animals, at

the enigmatical character of the situation, turned his pleading,

melancholy eyes from one to another of the motionless three, as if

begging that his humble intellect (pardon me, naturalists, for the

use of this word "intellect" in the matter of a monkey!) should

be enlightened as speedily as possible. Not receiving the desired

information, he, after the manner of trained animals, returned to his

muttons; in other words, he conceived that this unusual entrance, and

consequent dramatic _tableau_, meant "shop." He therefore dropped

Zonéla's hand and pattered on his velvety little feet over towards the

grim figure of the Wondersmith, holding out his poor little paw for

the customary copper. He had but one idea drilled into him,--soulless

creature that he was,--and that was, alms, But I have seen creatures

that professed to have souls, and that would have been indignant, if

you had denied them immortality, who took to the soliciting of alms as

naturally as if beggary had been the original sin, and was regularly

born with them, and never baptized out of them. I will give these

Bandits of the Order of Charity this credit, however, that they knew

the best highways and the richest founts of benevolence,--unlike to

Furbelow, who, unreasoning and undiscriminating, begged from the first

person that was near. Furbelow, owing to this intellectual inferiority

to the before-mentioned Alsatians, frequently got more kicks than

coppers, and the present supplication which he indulged in towards the

Wondersmith was a terrible confirmation of the rule. The reply to the

extended pleading paw was what might be called a double-barrelled kick,

--a kick to be represented by the power of two when the foot touched the

object, multiplied by four when the entire leg formed an angle of 45°

with the spinal column. The long, nervous leg of the Wondersmith caught

the little creature in the centre of the body, doubled up his brown,

hairy form, till he looked like a fur driving-glove, and sent him

whizzing across the room into a far corner, where he dropped senseless

and flaccid.

This vengeance which Herr Hippe executed upon Furbelow seemed to have

operated as a sort of escape-valve, and he found voice. He hissed out

the question, "Who are you?" to the hunchback; and in listening to that

essence of sibillation, it really seemed as if it proceeded from the

serpent that curled upon his upper lip.

"Who are you? Deformed dog, who are you? What do you here?"

"My name is Solon," answered the fearless head of the hunchback, while

the frail, cowardly body shivered and trembled inch by inch into a

corner.

"So you come to visit my daughter in the night-time, when I am away?"

continued the Wondersmith, with a sneering tone that dropped from his

snake-wreathed mouth like poison. "You are a brave and gallant lover,

are you not? Where did you win that Order of the Curse of God that

decorates your shoulders? The women turn their heads and look after you

in the street, when you pass, do they not? lost in admiration of that

symmetrical figure, those graceful limbs, that neck pliant as the stem

that moors the lotus! Elegant, conquering, Christian cripple, what do

you here in my daughter's room?"

Can you imagine Jove, limitless in power and wrath, hurling from his

vast grasp mountain after mountain upon the struggling Enceladus,--and

picture the Titan sinking, sinking, deeper and deeper into the earth,

crushed and dying, with nothing visible through the superincumbent

masses of Pelion and Ossa, but a gigantic head and two flaming eyes,

that, despite the death which is creeping through each vein, still flash

back defiance to the divine enemy? Well, Solon and Herr Hippe presented

such a picture, seen through the wrong end of a telescope,--reduced in

proportion, but alike in action. Solon's feeble body seemed to sink into

utter annihilation beneath the horrible taunts that his enemy hurled at

him, while the large, brave brow and unconquered eyes still sent forth a

magnetic resistance.

Suddenly the poor hunchback felt his arm grasped. A thrill seemed to run

through his entire body. A warm atmosphere, invigorating and full of

delicious odor, surrounded him. It appeared as if invisible bandages

were twisted all about his limbs, giving him a strange strength. His

sinking legs straightened. His powerless arms were braced. Astonished,

he glanced round for an instant, and beheld Zonéla, with a world of love

burning in her large lambent eyes, wreathing her round white arms about

his humped shoulders. Then the poet knew the great sustaining power of

love. Solon reared himself boldly.

"Sneer at my poor form," he cried, in strong vibrating tones, flinging

out one long arm and one thin finger at the Wondersmith, as if he would

have impaled him like a beetle. "Humiliate me, if you can. I care not.

You are a wretch, and I am honest and pure. This girl is not your

daughter. You are like one of those demons in the fairy tales that held

beauty and purity locked in infernal spells. I do not fear you, Heir

Hippe. There are stories abroad about you in the neighborhood, and when

you pass, people say that they feel evil and blight hovering over their

thresholds. You persecute this girl. You are her tyrant. You hate her. I

am a cripple. Providence has cast this lump upon my shoulders. But that

is nothing. The camel, that is the salvation of the children of the

desert, has been given his hump in order that he might bear his human

burden better. This girl, who is homeless as the Arab, is my appointed

load in life, and, please God, I will carry her on this back, hunched

though it may be. I have come to see her, because I love her,--because

she loves me. You have no claim on her; so I will take her from you."

Quick as lightning, the Wondersmith had stridden a few paces, and

grasped the poor cripple, who was yet quivering with the departing

thunder of his passion. He seized him in his bony, muscular grasp, as

he would have seized a puppet, and held him at arm's length gasping

and powerless; while Zonéla, pale, breathless, entreating, sank

half-kneeling on the floor.

"Your skeleton will be interesting to science when you are dead, Mr.

Solon," hissed the Wondersmith. "But before I have the pleasure of

reducing you to an anatomy, which I will assuredly do, I wish to

compliment you on your power of penetration, or sources of information;

for I know not if you have derived your knowledge from your own mental

research or the efforts of others. You are perfectly correct in your

statement, that this charming young person, who day after day parades

the streets with a barrel-organ and a monkey,--the last unhappily

indisposed at present,--listening to the degrading jokes of ribald boys

and depraved men,--you are quite correct, Sir, in stating that she is

not my daughter. On the contrary, she is the daughter of an Hungarian

nobleman who had the misfortune to incur my displeasure. I had a son,

crooked spawn of a Christian!--a son, not like you, cankered, gnarled

stump of life that you are,--but a youth tall and fair and noble in

aspect, as became a child of one whose lineage makes Pharaoh modern,--a

youth whose foot in the dance was as swift and beautiful to look at as

the golden sandals of the sun when he dances upon the sea in summer.

This youth was virtuous and good; and being of good race, and dwelling

in a country where his rank, gypsy as he was, was recognized, he mixed

with the proudest of the land. One day he fell in with this accursed

Hungarian, a fierce drinker of that Devil's blood called brandy. My

child until that hour had avoided this bane of our race. Generous wine

he drank, because the soul of the sun our ancestor palpitated in its

purple waves. But brandy, which is fallen and accursed wine, as devils

are fallen and accursed angels, had never crossed his lips, until in an

evil hour he was seduced by this Christian hog, and from that day forth

his life was one fiery debauch, which set only in the black waves of

death. I vowed vengeance on the destroyer of my child, and I kept my

word. I have destroyed _his_ child,--not compassed her death, but

blighted her life, steeped her in misery and poverty, and now, thanks to

the thousand devils, I have discovered a new torture for her heart. She

thought to solace her life with a love-episode! Sweet little epicure

that she was! She shall have her little crooked lover, shan't she?

Oh, yes! She shall have him, cold and stark and livid, with that great,

black, heavy hunch, which no back, however broad, can bear, Death,

sitting between his shoulders!"

There was something so awful and demoniac in this entire speech and the

manner in which it was delivered, that it petrified Zonéla into a mere

inanimate figure, whose eyes seemed unalterably fixed on the fierce,

cruel face of the Wondersmith. As for Solon, he was paralyzed in the

grasp of his foe. He heard, but could not reply. His large eyes, dilated

with horror to far beyond their ordinary size, expressed unutterable

agony.

The last sentence had hardly been hissed out by the gypsy when he took

from his pocket a long, thin coil of whipcord, which he entangled in

a complicated mesh around the cripple's body. It was not the ordinary

binding of a prisoner. The slender lash passed and repassed in a

thousand intricate folds over the powerless limbs of the poor humpback.

When the operation was completed, he looked as if he had been sewed from

head to foot in some singularly ingenious species of network.

"Now, my pretty lop-sided little lover," laughed Herr Hippe, flinging

Solon over his shoulder, as a fisherman might fling a net-full of fish,

"we will proceed to put you into your little cage until your little

coffin is quite ready. Meanwhile we will lock up your darling

beggar-girl to mourn over your untimely end."

So saying, he stepped from the room with his captive, and securely

locked the door behind him.

When he had disappeared, the frozen Zonéla thawed, and with a shriek of

anguish flung herself on the inanimate body of Furbelow.

VI.

THE POISONING OF THE SWORDS.

It was New Year's Eve, and eleven o'clock at night. All over this great

land, and in every great city in the land, curly heads were lying on

white pillows, dreaming of the coming of the generous Santa Claus.

Innumerable stockings hung by countless bedsides. Visions of beautiful

toys, passing in splendid pageantry through myriads of dimly lit

dormitories, made millions of little hearts palpitate in sleep. Ah! what

heavenly toys those were that the children of this soil beheld, that

mystic night, in their dreams! Painted cars with orchestral wheels,

making music more delicious than the roll of planets. Agile men of

cylindrical figure, who sprang unexpectedly out of meek-looking boxes,

with a supernatural fierceness in their crimson cheeks and fur-whiskers.

Herds of marvellous sheep, with fleeces as impossible as the one that

Jason sailed after; animals entirely indifferent to grass and water and

"rot" and "ticks." Horses spotted with an astounding regularity, and

furnished with the most ingenious methods of locomotion. Slender

foreigners, attired in painfully short tunics, whose existence passed in

continually turning heels over head down a steep flight of steps, at

the bottom of which they lay in an exhausted condition with dislocated

limbs, until they were restored to their former elevation, when they

went at it again as if nothing had happened. Stately swans, that seemed

to have a touch of the ostrich in them; for they swam continually after

a piece of iron which was held before them, as if consumed with a

ferruginous hunger. Whole farm-yards of roosters, whose tails curled the

wrong way,--a slight defect, that was, however, amply atoned for by the

size and brilliancy of their scarlet combs, which, it would appear,

Providence had intended for pen-wipers. Pears, that, when applied to

youthful lips, gave forth sweet and inspiring sounds. Regiments of

soldiers, that performed neat, but limited evolutions on cross-jointed

contractile battle-fields. All these things, idealized, transfigured,

and illuminated by the powers and atmosphere and colored lamps of

Dreamland, did the millions of dear sleeping children behold, the night

of the New Year's Eve of which I speak.

It was on this night, when Time was preparing to shed his skin and come

out young and golden and glossy as ever,--when, in the vast chambers of

the universe, silent and infallible preparations were making for the

wonderful birth of the coming year,--when mystic dews were secreted

for his baptism, and mystic instruments were tuned in space to welcome

him,--it was at this holy and solemn hour that the Wondersmith and his

three gypsy companions sat in close conclave in the little parlor before

mentioned.

There was a fire roaring in the grate. On a table, nearly in the centre

of the room, stood a huge decanter of Port wine, that glowed in the

blaze which lit the chamber like a flask of crimson fire. On every side,

piled in heaps, inanimate, but scowling with the same old wondrous

scowl, lay myriads of the manikins, all clutching in their wooden hands

their tiny weapons. The Wondersmith held in one hand a small silver

bowl filled with a green, glutinous substance, which he was delicately

applying, with the aid of a camel's-hair brush, to the tips of tiny

swords and daggers. A horrible smile wandered over his sallow face,--a

smile as unwholesome in appearance as the sickly light that plays above

reeking graveyards.

"Let us drink great draughts, brothers," he cried, leaving off his

strange anointment for a while, to lift a great glass, filled with

sparkling liquor, to his lips. "Let us drink to our approaching triumph.

Let us drink to the great poison, Macousha. Subtle seed of Death,--swift

hurricane that sweeps away Life,--vast hammer that crushes brain and

heart and artery with its resistless weight,--I drink to it."

"It is a noble decoction, Duke Balthazar," said the old fortune-teller

and midwife, Madame Filomel, nodding in her chair as she swallowed her

wine in great gulps. "Where did you obtain it?"

"It is made," said the Wondersmith, swallowing another great goblet-full

of wine ere he replied, "in the wild woods of Guiana, in silence and

in mystery. But one tribe of Indians, the Macoushi Indians, know the

secret. It is simmered over fires built of strange woods, and the maker

of it dies in the making. The place, for a mile around the spot where

it is fabricated, is shunned as accursed. Devils hover over the pot in

which it stews; and the birds of the air, scenting the smallest breath

of its vapor from far away, drop to earth with paralyzed wings, cold and

dead."

"It kills, then, fast?" asked Kerplonne, the artificial eyemaker,--his

own eyes gleaming, under the influence of the wine, with a sinister

lustre, as if they had been fresh from the factory, and were yet

untarnished by use.

"Kills?" echoed the Wondersmith, derisively; "it is swifter than

thunderbolts, stronger than lightning. But you shall see it proved

before we let forth our army on the city accursed. You shall see a

wretch die, as if smitten by a falling fragment of the sun."

"What? Do you mean Solon?" asked Oaksmith and the fortune-teller

together.

"Ah! you mean the young man who makes the commerce with books?" echoed

Kerplonne. "It is well. His agonies will instruct us."

"Yes! Solon," answered Hippe, with a savage accent. "I hate him, and he

shall die this horrid death. Ah! how the little fellows will leap upon

him, when I bring him in, bound and helpless, and give their beautiful

wicked souls to them! How they will pierce him in ten thousand spots

with their poisoned weapons, until his skin turns blue and violet and

crimson, and his form swells with the venom,--until his hump is lost in

shapeless flesh! He hears what I say, every word of it. He is in the

closet next door, and is listening. How comfortable he feels! How

the sweat of terror rolls on his brow! How he tries to loosen his bonds,

and curses all earth and heaven when he finds that he cannot! Ho! ho!

Handsome lover of Zonéla, will she kiss you when you are livid and

swollen? Brothers, let us drink again,--drink always. Here, Oaksmith,

take these brushes,--and you, Filomel,--and finish the anointing of

these swords. This wine is grand. This poison is grand. It is fine to

have good wine to drink, and good poison to kill with; is it not?" and,

with flushed face and rolling eyes, the Wondersmith continued to drink

and use his brush alternately.

The others hastened to follow his example. It was a horrible scene:

those four wicked faces; those myriads of tiny faces, just as wicked;

the certain unearthly air that pervaded the apartment; the red,

unwholesome glare cast by the fire; the wild and reckless way in which

the weird company drank the red-illumined wine.

The anointing of the swords went on rapidly, and the wine went as

rapidly down the throats of the four poisoners. Their faces grew more

and more inflamed each instant; their eyes shone like rolling fireballs;

their hair was moist and dishevelled. The old fortune-teller rocked to

and fro in her chair, like those legless plaster figures that sway upon

convex loaded bottoms. All four began to mutter incoherent sentences,

and babble unintelligible wickednesses. Still the anointing of the

swords went on.

"I see the faces of millions of young corpses," babbled Herr Hippe,

gazing, with swimming eyes, into the silver bowl that contained the

Macousha poison,--"all young, all Christians,--and the little fellows

dancing, dancing, and stabbing, stabbing. Filomel, Filomel, I say!"

"Well, Grand Duke," snored the old woman, giving a violent lurch.

"Where's the bottle of souls?"

"In my right-hand pocket, Herr Hippe"; and she felt, so as to assure

herself that it was there. She half drew out the black bottle,

before described in this narrative, and let it slide again into her

pocket,--let it slide again, but it did not completely regain its former

place. Caught by some accident, it hung half out, swaying over the edge

of the pocket, as the fat midwife rolled backwards and forwards in her

drunken efforts at equilibrium.

"All right," said Herr Hippe, "perfectly right! Let's drink."

He reached out his hand for his glass, and, with a dull sigh, dropped on

the table, in the instantaneous slumber of intoxication. Oaksmith soon

fell back in his chair, breathing heavily. Kerplonne followed. And the

heavy, stertorous breathing of Filomel told that she slumbered also; but

still her chair retained its rocking motion, and still the bottle of

souls balanced itself on the edge of her pocket.

VII.

LET LOOSE.

Sure enough, Solon heard every word of the fiendish talk of the

Wondersmith. For how many days he had been shut up, bound in the

terrible net, in that dark closet, he did not know; but now he felt that

his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in

efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe

placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this

meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it

was better than the horrible death that menaced him. His brain reeled

with terror at the prospect of it. Then, where was Zonéla? Why did she

not come to his rescue? But she was, perhaps, dead. The darkness, too,

appalled him. A faint light, when the moon was bright, came at night

through a chink far up in the wall; and the only other hole in the

chamber was an aperture through which, at some former time, a stove-pipe

had been passed. Even if he were free, there would have been small hope

of escape; but, laced as it were in a network of steel, what was to be

done? He groaned and writhed upon the floor, and tore at the boards with

his hands, which were free from the wrists down. All else was as solidly

laced up as an Indian papoose. Nothing but pride kept him from shrieking

aloud, when, on the night of New Year's Eve, be heard the fiendish Hippe

recite the programme of his murder.

While he was thus wailing and gnashing his teeth in darkness and

torture, he heard a faint noise above his head. Then something seemed to

leap from the ceiling and alight softly on the floor. He shuddered with

terror. Was it some new torture of the Wondersmith's invention? The next

moment, he felt some small animal crawling over his body, and a soft,

silky paw was pushed timidly across his face. His heart leaped with joy.

"It is Furbelow!" he cried. "Zonéla has sent him. He came through the

stove-pipe hole."

It was Furbelow, indeed, restored to life by Zonéla's care, and who had

come down a narrow tube, that no human being could have threaded,

to console the poor captive. The monkey nestled closely into the

hunchback's bosom, and as he did so, Solon felt something cold and hard

hanging from his neck. He touched it. It was sharp. By the dim light

that struggled through the aperture high up in the wall, he discovered

a knife, suspended by a bit of cord. Ah! how the blood came rushing

through the veins that crossed over and through his heart, when life and

liberty came to him in this bit of rusty steel! With his manacled hands

he loosened the heaven-sent weapon; a few cuts were rapidly made in the

cunning network of cord that enveloped his limbs, and in a few seconds

he was free!--cramped and faint with hunger, but free!--free to move,

to use the limbs that God had given him for his preservation,--free to

fight,--to die fighting, perhaps,--but still to die free. He ran to the

door. The bolt was a weak one, for the Wondersmith had calculated more

surely on his prison of cords than on any jail of stone,--and more; and

with a few efforts the door opened. He went cautiously out into the

darkness, with Furbelow perched on his shoulder, pressing his cold

muzzle against his cheek. He had made but a few steps when a trembling

hand was put into his, and in another moment Zonéla's palpitating heart

was pressed against his own. One long kiss, an embrace, a few whispered

words, and the hunchback and the girl stole softly towards the door of

the chamber in which the four gypsies slept. All seemed still; nothing

but the hard breathing of the sleepers, and the monotonous rocking of

Madame Filomel's chair broke the silence. Solon stooped down and put his

eye to the keyhole, through which a red bar of light streamed into the

entry. As he did so, his foot crushed some brittle substance that lay

just outside the door; at the same moment a howl of agony was heard to

issue from the room within. Solon started; nor did he know that at that

instant he had crushed into dust Monsieur Kerplonne's supernumerary eye,

and the owner, though wrapt in a drunken sleep, felt the pang quiver

through his brain.

While Solon peeped through the keyhole, all in the room was motionless.

He had not gazed, however, for many seconds, when the chair of the

fortune-teller gave a sudden lurch, and the black bottle, already

hanging half out of her wide pocket, slipped entirely from its

resting-place, and, falling heavily to the ground, shivered into

fragments.

Then took place an astonishing spectacle. The myriads of armed dolls,

that lay in piles about the room, became suddenly imbued with motion.

They stood up straight, their tiny limbs moved, their black eyes flashed

with wicked purposes, their thread-like swords gleamed as they waved

them to and fro. The villanous souls imprisoned in the bottle began

to work within them. Like the Liliputians, when they found the giant

Gulliver asleep, they scaled in swarms the burly sides of the four

sleeping gypsies. At every step they took, they drove their thin swords

and quivering daggers into the flesh of the drunken authors of their

being. To stab and kill was their mission, and they stabbed and killed

with incredible fury. They clustered on the Wondersmith's sallow cheeks

and sinewy throat, piercing every portion with their diminutive poisoned

blades. Filomel's fat carcass was alive with them. They blackened the

spare body of Monsieur Kerplonne. They covered Oaksmith's huge form like

a cluster of insects.

Overcome completely with the fumes of wine, these tiny wounds did not

for a few moments awaken the sleeping victims. But the swift and deadly

poison Macousha, with which the weapons had been so fiendishly anointed,

began to work. Herr Hippe, stung into sudden life, leaped to his feet,

with a dwarf army clinging to his clothes and his hands,--always

stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. For an instant, a look of stupid

bewilderment clouded his face; then the horrible truth burst upon him.

He gave a shriek like that which a horse utters when he finds himself

fettered and surrounded by fire,--a shriek that curdled the air for

miles and miles.

"Oaksmith! Kerplonne! Filomel! Awake! awake! We are lost! The souls have

got loose! We are dead! poisoned! Oh, accursed ones! Oh, demons, ye are

slaying me! Ah! fiends of Hell!"

Aroused by these frightful howls, the three gypsies sprang also to their

feet, to find themselves stung to death by the manikins. They raved,

they shrieked, they swore. They staggered round the chamber. Blinded in

the eyes by the ever-stabbing weapons,--with the poison already burning

in their veins like red-hot lead,--their forms swelling and discoloring

visibly every moment,--their howls and attitudes and furious gestures

made the scene look like a chamber in Hell.

Maddened beyond endurance, the Wondersmith, half-blind and choking with

the venom that had congested all the blood-vessels of his body, seized

dozens of the manikins and dashed them into the fire, trampling them

down with his feet.

"Ye shall die too, if I die," he cried, with a roar like that of a

tiger. "Ye shall burn, if I burn. I gave ye life,--I give ye death.

Down!--down!--burn!--flame! Fiends that ye are, to slay us! Help me,

brothers! Before we die, let us have our revenge!"

On this, the other gypsies, themselves maddened by approaching death,

began hurling manikins, by handfuls, into the fire. The little

creatures, being wooden of body, quickly caught the flames, and an awful

struggle for life took place in miniature in the grate. Some of them

escaped from between the bars and ran about the room, blazing, writhing

in agony, and igniting the curtains and other draperies that hung

around. Others fought and stabbed one another in the very core of the

fire, like combating salamanders. Meantime, the motions of the gypsies

grew more languid and slow, and their curses were uttered in choked

guttural tones. The faces of all four were spotted with red and green

and violet, like so many egg-plants. Their bodies were swollen to a

frightful size, and at last they dropped on the floor, like overripe

fruit shaken from the boughs by the winds of autumn.

The chamber was now a sheet of fire. The flames roared round and round,

as if seeking for escape, licking every projecting cornice and sill with

greedy tongues, as the serpent licks his prey before he swallows it. A

hot, putrid breath came through the keyhole and smote Solon and Zonéla

like a wind of death. They clasped each other's hands with a moan of

terror, and fled from the house.

The next morning, when the young Year was just unclosing its eyes, and

the happy children all over the great city were peeping from their beds

into the myriads of stockings hanging near by, the blue skies of heaven

shone through a black network of stone and charred rafters. These were

all that remained of the habitation of Herr Hippe, the Wondersmith.

ROBA DI ROMA

[Continued.]

CHAPTER IV.

Lent.

The gay confusion of Carnival is over, with its mad tossing of flowers

and _bonbons_, its showering of _confetti_, its brilliantly draped

balconies running over with happy faces, its barbaric races, its rows of

joyous _contadine_, its quaint masquerading, and all the glad folly of

its Saturnalia. For Saturnalia it is, in most respects just like the

_festa_ of the Ancient Romans, with its _Saturni septem dies_, its

uproar of "_Io Saturnalia!_" in the streets, and all its mad frolic. In

one point it materially differs, however; for on the ancient _festa_ no

criminal could be punished; but in modern times it is this gay occasion

that the government selects to execute (_giustiziare_) any poor wretch

who may have been condemned to death, so as to strike a wholesome terror

into the crowd. Truly, the ways of the Church are as wonderful as

they are infallible! But all is over now. The last _moccoletti_ are

extinguished, that flashed and danced like myriad fire-flies from window

and balcony and over the heads of the roaring tide of people that ebbed

and flowed in stormy streams of wild laughter through the streets. The

Corso has become sober and staid, and taken in its draperies. The fun is

finished. The masked balls, with their _belle maschere_, are over. The

theatres are all closed. Lent has come, bringing its season of sadness;

and the gay world of strangers is flocking down to Naples.

_Eh, Signore! Finito il nostro carnovale. Adesso è il carnovale dei

preti:_--"Our carnival is over, and that of the priests has come." All

the _frati_ are going round to every Roman family, high and low, from

the prince in his palace to the boy in the _caffe_, demanding "_una

santa elemosina,--un abbondante santa elemosina,--ma abbondante_,"--and

willingly pocketing any sum, from a half-_baiocco_ upwards. The parish

priest is now making his visits in every ward of the city, to register

the names of the Catholics in all the houses, so as to insure a

confession from each during this season of penance. And woe to any wight

who fails to do his duty!--he will soon be brought to his marrow-bones.

His name will be placarded in the church, and he will be punished

according to circumstances,--perhaps by a mortification to the pocket,

perhaps by the penance of the convent; and perhaps his fate will be

worse, if he be obstinate. So nobody is obstinate, and all go to

confession like good Christians, and confess what they please, for the

sake of peace, if not of absolution. The Francescani march more solemnly

up and down the alleys of their cabbage-garden, studiously with books in

their hands, which they pretend to read; now and then taking out their

snuff-stained bandanna and measuring it from corner to corner, in search

of a feasible spot for its appropriate function, and then rolling it

carefully into a little round ball and returning it to the place whence

it came. Whatever penance they do is not to Father Tiber or Santo

Acquedotto, excepting by internal ablutions,--the exterior things of

this world being ignored. There is no meat-eating now, save on certain

festivals, when a supply is laid in for the week. But opposites cure

opposites, (contrary to the homoeopathic rule,) and their _magro_ makes

them _grasso_. Two days of festival, however, there are in the little

church of San Patrizio and Isidoro, when the streets are covered with

sand, and sprigs of box and red and yellow hangings flaunt before the

portico, and scores of young boy-priests invade their garden, and,

tucking up their long skirts, run and scream among the cabbages;

for boydom is an irrepressible thing, even under the extinguisher of a

priest's black dress.

Daily you will hear the tinkle of a bell and the chant of alto

child-voices in the street, and, looking out, you will see two little

boys clad in some refuse of the Church's wardrobe, one of whom carries a

crucifix or a big black cross, while the other rings a bell and chants

as he loiters along; now stopping to chaff with other boys of a similar

age, nay, even at times laying down his cross to dispute or struggle

with them, and now renewing the appeal of the bell. This is to call

together the children of the parish to learn their Dottrina or

Catechism,--from which the Second Commandment is, however, carefully

expurgated, lest to their feeble minds the difference between bowing

down to graven images, or likenesses of things in the earth, and what

they do daily before the images and pictures of the Virgin and Saints

may not clearly appear. Indeed, let us cheerfully confess, in passing,

that, by a strange forgetfulness, this same Commandment is not

reestablished in its place even in the catechism for older persons,--of

course through inadvertence. However, it is of no consequence, as the

real number of Ten Commandments is made up by the division of the last

into two; so that there really are ten. And in a country where so many

pictures are painted and statues made, perhaps this Second Commandment

might be open to misconstruction, if not prohibited by the wise and holy

men of the Church. [A]

[Footnote A: This is a fact,--denied, of course, by some of the Roman

Catholics, in argument; for what will they not deny? But it is,

nevertheless, a fact. I have now before me a little Catechism, from

which the Second Commandment is omitted, and the Tenth divided into two;

and I have examined others in which the same omission is made. I cannot

say that all are in the same category; for the Catholic Church is

everything to everybody; but I can assert it of all I have seen,

and especially of _La Dottrina Xtiana, compilata per Ordine dell

Eminentissinto Cardinale_ GONZAGA MEMBRINI, _Vescovo di Ancona, per

l'Uso delict Citta e Diocesi_, published in 1830, which I mention

because it is a compilation of authority, made under the superintendence

of the Cardinal Bishop of Ancona,--and of the _Catechismo per i

Fanciulll, ad Uso delle Città e Diocesi di Cortona, Chiuso, Pienza,

Pistoia, Prato e Colle_, published in 1786, under the auspices and with

the approval of the bishops of all these cities and dioceses.]

Meantime the snow is gradually disappearing from Monte Gennaro and the

Sabine Mountains. Picnic parties are spreading their tables under the

Pamfili Doria pines, and drawing St. Peter's from the old wall near

by the ilex avenue,--or making excursions to Frascati, Tusculum, and

Albano,--or spending a day in wandering among the ruins of the Etruscan

city of Veii, lost to the world so long ago that even the site of it was

unknown to the Caesars,--or strolling by the shore at Ostia, or under

the magnificent _pineta_ at Castel Fusano, whose lofty trees repeat, as

in a dream, the sound of the blue Mediterranean that washes the coast at

half a mile distant. There is no lack of places that Time has shattered

and strewn with relics, leaving Nature to festoon her ruins and heal her

wounds with tenderest vines and flowers, where one may spend a charming

day and dream of the old times.

Spring--_prima vera_, the first true thing, as the Italians call it--has

come. The nightingales already begin to bubble into song under the

Ludovisi ilexes and in the Barberini Gardens. Daisies have snowed all

over the Campagna,--periwinkles star the grass,--crocuses and anemones

impurple the spaces between the rows of springing grain along the still

brown slopes. At every turn in the streets baskets-full of _mammole_,

the sweet-scented Parma violet, are offered you by little girls and

boys; and at the corner of the Condotti and Corso is a splendid show of

camelias, set into beds of double violets, and sold for a song. Now and

then one meets huge baskets filled with these delicious violets, on their

way to the confectioners and caffes, where they will be made into syrup;

for the Italians are very fond of this _bibite_, and prize it not only for

its flavor, but for its medicinal qualities. Violets seem to rain over the

villas in the spring,--acres are purple with them, and the air all around

is sweet with their fragrance. Every day, scores of carriages are driving

about the Borghese grounds, which are open to the public, and hundreds of

children are running about, plucking flowers and playing on the lovely

slopes and in the shadows of the noble trees, while their parents stroll

at a distance and wait for them in the shady avenues. At the Pamfili Doria

villa the English play their national game of cricket, on the flower-

enamelled green, which is covered with the most wondrous anemones; and

there is a _matinée_ of friends who come to chat and look on. This game is

rather "slow" at Rome, however, and does not rhyme with the Campagna. The

Italians lift their hands and wonder what there is in it to fascinate the

English; and the English in turn call them a lazy, stupid set, because

they do not admire it. But those who have seen _pallone_ will not,

perhaps, so much wonder at the Italians, nor condemn them for not playing

their own game, when they remember that the French have turned them out of

their only amphitheatre adapted for it, and left them only _pazienza_.

If one drives out at any of the gates, he will see that spring is come.

The hedges are putting forth their leaves, the almond-trees are in full

blossom, and in the vineyards the _contadini_ are setting cane-poles and

trimming the vines to run upon them. Here and there, along the slopes,

the rude old plough of the Georgics, dragged by great gray oxen, turns

up the rich loam, that "needs only to be tickled to laugh out in flowers

and grain." In the olive-orchards, the farmers are carefully pruning

away the decayed branches and loosening the soil about their old roots.

Here and there, the smoke of distant bonfires, burning heaps of useless

stubble, shows against the dreamy purple hills like the pillar of cloud

that led the Israelites. One smells the sharp odor of these fires

everywhere, and hears them crackle in the fields.

"Atque levem stipulam crepitantibus urere flammis."

On _festa_-days the way-side _osterias (con cucina)_ are crowded by

parties who come out to sit under the _frascati_ of vines and drink the

wine grown on the very spot, and regale themselves with a _frittata_

of eggs and chopped sausages, or a slice of _agnello_, and enjoy the

delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals

descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their

household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin

liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad

red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in

their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of

scholars from the Propaganda stream along, now and then, two by two,

their leading-strings swinging behind them, and in their ranks all

shades of physiognomy, from African and Egyptian to Irish and American.

Scholars, too, from the English College, and Germans, in red, go by in

companies. All the schools, too, will be out,--little boys, in black

hats, following the lead of their priest-master, (for all masters are

priests,) and orphan girls in white, convoyed by Sisters of Charity, and

the deaf and dumb with their masters. Scores of _ciocciari_, also, may

be seen in faded scarlets, with their wardrobes of wretched clothes, and

sometimes a basket with a baby in it, on their heads. The _contadini_,

who have been to Rome to be hired for the week to labor on the Campagna,

come tramping along too, one of them often mounted on a donkey, and

followed by a group carrying their tools with them; while hundreds of

the middle classes, husbands and wives with their children, and _paini_

and _paine_, with all their jewelry on, are out to take their _festa_

stroll, and to see and be seen.

Once in a while, the sadness of Lent is broken by a Church festival,

when all the fasters eat prodigiously and make up for their usual Lenten

fare. One of the principal days is that of the 19th of March, dedicated

to San Giuseppe, (the most ill-used of all the saints,) when the little

church in Capo le Case, dedicated to him, is hung with brilliant

draperies, and the pious flock thither in crowds to say their prayers.

The great curtain is swaying to and fro constantly as they come and go,

and a file of beggars is on the steps to relieve you of _baiocchi_.

Beside them stands a fellow who sells a print of the Angel appearing to

San Giuseppe in a dream, and warning him against the sin of jealousy.

Four curious lines beneath the print thus explain it:--

"Qual sinistro pensier l'alma ti scuote?

Se il sen fecondo di Maria tu vedi,

Giuseppe, non temer; calmati, e credi

Ch' opra è sol di colui che tutto puote."

Whether Joseph is satisfied or not with this explanation, it would be

difficult to determine from his expression. He looks rather haggard and

bored than persuaded, and certainly has not that cheerful acquiescence

of countenance which one is taught to expect.

During all Lent, a sort of bun, called _maritozze_, which is filled with

the edible kernels of the pine-cone, made light with oil, and thinly

crusted with sugar, is eaten by the faithful,--and a very good Catholic

"institution" it is. But in the festival days of San Giuseppe, gayly

ornamented booths are built at the corner of many of the streets,

especially near the church in Capo le Case, in the Borgo, and at San

Eustachio, which are adorned with great green branches as large as young

trees, and hung with red and gold draperies, where the "_Frittelle di

San Giuseppe_" are fried in huge caldrons of boiling oil and served out

to the common people. These _frittelle_, which are a sort of delicate

doughnut, made of flour mixed sometimes with rice, are eaten by all good

Catholics, though one need not be a Catholic to find them excellent

eating. In front of the principal booths are swung "_Sonetti_" in praise

of the Saint, of the cook, and of the doughnuts,--some of them declaring

that Mercury has already descended from Olympus at the command of the

gods to secure a large supply of the _frittelle_, and praying all

believers to make haste, or there would be no more left. The latter

alternative seems little probable, when one sees the quantity of

provision laid in by the vendors. Their prayer, however, is heeded by

all; and a gay scene enough it is,--especially at night, when the great

cups filled with lard are lighted, and the shadows dance on the crowd,

and the light flashes on the tinsel-covered festoons that sway with the

wind, and illuminates the great booth, while the smoke rises from the

great caldrons which flank it on either side, and the cooks, all in

white, ladle out the dripping _frittelle_ into large polished platters,

and laugh and joke, and laud their work, and shout at the top of their

lungs, "_Ecco le belle, ma belle frittelle_!" For weeks this frying

continues in the streets; but after the day of San Giuseppe, not only

the sacred _frittelle_ are made, but thousands of minute fishes,

fragments of cauliflower, _broccoli_, cabbage, and _carciofi_ go into

the hissing oil, and are heaped all "_dorati_" upon the platters and

vases. For all sorts of fries the Romans are justly celebrated. The

sweet olive-oil, which takes the place of our butter and lard, makes the

fry light, delicate, and of a beautiful golden color; and spread upon

the snowy tables of these booths, their odor is so appetizing and their

look so inviting, that I have often been tempted to join the crowds who

fill their plates and often their pocket-handkerchiefs (_con rispetto_)

with these golden fry, "_fritti dorati_," as they are called, and thus

do honor to the Saint, and comfort their stomachs with holy food, which

quells the devil of hunger within.[A]

[Footnote A: This festival of San Giuseppe, which takes place on the

19th of March, bears a curious resemblance to the _Liberalia_ of the

ancient Romans, a festival in honor of Bacchus, which was celebrated

every year on the 17th of March, when priests and priestesses, adorned

with garlands of ivy, carried through the city wine, honey, cakes, and

sweetmeats, together with a portable altar, in the middle of

which was a small fire-pan, (_foculus_,) in which, from time to time,

sacrifices were burnt. The altar has now become a booth, the _foculus_

a caldron, the sacrifices are of little fishes as well as of cakes,

and San Giuseppe has taken the place of Bacchus, Liber Pater; but the

festivals, despite these differences, have such grotesque points of

resemblance that the latter looks like the former, just as one's face is

still one's face, however distortedly reflected in the bowl of a spoon;

and, perhaps, if one remembers the third day of the Anthesteria, when

cooked vegetables were offered in honor of Bacchus, by putting it

together with the Liberalia, we shall easily get the modern _festa_ of

San Giuseppe.]

But not only at this time and at these booths are good _fritti_ to

be found. It is a favorite mode of cooking in Rome; and a mixed fry

(_fritta mista_) of bits of liver, brains, cauliflower, and _carciofi_

is a staple dish, always ready at every restaurant. At any _osteria con

cucina_ on the Campagna one is also sure of a good omelet and salad;

and, sitting under the vines, after a long walk, I have made as savory

a lunch on these two articles as ever I found in the most glittering

restaurant in the Palais Royal. If one add the background of exquisite

mountains, the middle distance of flowery slopes, where herds of

long-haired goats, sheep, and gray oxen are feeding among the skeletons

of broken aqueducts, ruined tombs, and shattered mediaeval towers, and

the foreground made up of picturesque groups of peasants, who lounge

about the door, and come and go, and men from the Campagna, on

horseback, with their dark, capacious cloak and long ironed staff, who

have come from counting their oxen and superintending the farming, and

_carrettieri_, stopping in their hooded wine-carts or ringing along the

road,--there is, perhaps, as much to charm the artist as is to be seen

while sipping beer or _eau gazeuse_ on the hot Parisian _asphalte_,

where the _grisette_ studiously shows her clean ankles, and the dandy

struts in his patent-leather boots.

One great _festa_ there is during Lent at the little town of

Grotta-Ferrata, about fourteen miles from Rome. It takes place on the

25th of March, and sometimes is very gay and picturesque, and always

charming to one who has eyes to see and has shed some of his national

prejudices. By eight o'clock in the morning open carriages begin to

stream out of the Porta San Giovanni, and in about two hours the old

castellated monastery may be seen at whose feet the little village of

Grotta-Ferrata stands. As we advance through noble elms and planetrees,

crowds of _contadini_ line the way, beggars scream from the banks,

donkeys bray, _carretti_ rattle along, until at last we arrive at a long

meadow which seems alive and crumbling with gayly dressed figures that

are moving to and fro as thick as ants upon an ant-hill. Here are

gathered peasants from all the country-villages within ten miles, all in

their festal costumes; along the lane which skirts the meadow and

leads through the great gate of the old fortress, donkeys are

crowded together, and keeping up a constant and outrageous concert;

_saltimbanci_, in harlequin suits, are making faces or haranguing from

a platform, and inviting everybody into their penny-show. From inside

their booths is heard the sound of the invariable pipes and drum, and

from the lifted curtain now and then peers forth a comic face, and then

disappears with a sudden scream and wild gesticulation. Meantime the

closely packed crowd moves slowly along in both directions, and on we go

through the archway into the great court-yard. Here, under the shadow

of the monastery, booths and benches stand in rows, arrayed with the

produce of the country-villages,--shoes, rude implements of husbandry,

the coarse woven fabrics of the _contadini_, hats with cockades and

rosettes, feather brooms and brushes, and household things, with here

and there the tawdry pinchbeck ware of a peddler of jewelry, and little

_quadretti_ of Madonna and saints. Extricating ourselves from the crowd,

we ascend by a stone stairway to the walk around the parapets of the

walls, and look down upon the scene. How gay it is! Around the fountain,

which is spilling in the centre of the court, a constantly varying group

is gathered, washing, drinking, and filling their flasks and vases.

Near by, a charlatan, mounted on a table, with a huge canvas behind him

painted all over with odd cabalistic figures, is screaming, in loud and

voluble tones, the virtues of his medicines and unguents, and his skill

in extracting teeth. One need never have a pang in tooth, ear, head, or

stomach, if one will but trust his wonderful promises. In one little

bottle he has the famous water which renews youth; in another, the

lotion which awakens love, or cures jealousy, or changes the fright into

the beauty. All the while he plays with his tame serpents, and chatters

as if his tongue went of itself, while the crowd of peasants below gape

at him, laugh with him, and buy from him. Listen to him, all who have

ears!

Udite, udite, O rustici!

Attenti, non fiatate!

Io già suppongo e immagino

Che al par di me sappiate

Che io son quel gran medico

Dottore Enciclopedico

Chiamato Dulcamara,

La cui virtu preclara

E i portenti infiniti

Son noti in tutto il mondo--_e in altri siti_.

Benefattor degli uomini,

Reparator dei mali,

In pochi giorni io sgombrerò.

Io spazzo gli spedali

E la salute a vendere

Per tutto il mondo io vo.

Compratela, compratela,--

Per poco io ve la do.

È questo l'odontalgico,

Mirabile liquore,

De' topi e dei cimici

Possente distruttore,

I cui certificati

Autentici, bollati,

Toccar, vedere, e leggere,

A ciaschedun farò.

Per questo mio specifico

Simpatico, prolifico,

Un uom settuagenario

E valetudinario

Nonno di dieci bamboli

Ancora diventò.

O voi matrona rigide,

Ringiovanir bramate?

Le vostre rughe incomode

Con esso cancellate.

Volete, voi donzelle,

Ben liscia aver la pelle?

Voi giovani galanti,

Per sempre avere amanti,

Comprate il mio specifico,--

Per poco io ve lo do.

Ei move i paralitici,

Spedisce gli apopletici,

Gli asmatici, gli asfitici,

Gli isterici, e disbetici;

Guarisce timpanitidi

E scrofoli e rachitidi;

E fino il mal di fegato,

Che in moda diventò.

Comprate il mio specifico,--

Per poco io ve lo do.

And so on and on and on. There is never an end of that voluble gabble.

Nothing is more amusing than the Italian _ciarlatano_, wherever you meet

him; but, like many other national characters, he is vanishing, and is

seen more and more rarely every year. Perhaps he has been promoted to an

office in the Church or government, and finds more pickings there than

at the fairs; and if not, perhaps he has sold out his profession and

good-will to his confessor, who has mounted, by means of it into a

gilded carriage, and wears silk stockings, whose color, for fear of

mistake, I will not mention.

But to return to the fair and our station on the parapets at

Grotta-Ferrata. Opposite us is a penthouse, (where nobody peaks and

pines,) whose jutting _fraschi_-covered eaves and posts are adorned with

gay draperies; and under the shadow of this is seated a motley set of

peasants at their lunch and dinner. Smoking plates come in and out of

the dark hole of a door that opens into kitchen and cellar, and the

_camerieri_ cry constantly, "_Vengo subito_" "_Eccomi quà_"--whether

they come or not. Big-bellied flasks of rich Grotta-Ferrata wine are

filled and emptied; and bargains are struck for cattle, donkeys, and

clothes; and healths are pledged and _brindisi_ are given. But there is

no riot and no quarrelling. If we lift our eyes from this swarm below,

we see the exquisite Campagna with its silent, purple distances

stretching off to Rome, and hear the rush of a wild torrent scolding in

the gorge below among the stones and olives.

But while we are lingering here, a crowd is pushing through into the

inner court, where mass is going on in the curious old church. One has

now to elbow his way to enter, and all around the door, even out into

the middle court, _contadini_ are kneeling. Besides this, the whole

place reeks intolerably with garlic, which, mixed with whiff of incense

from the church within and other unmentionable smells, makes such a

compound that only a brave nose can stand it. But stand it we must, if

we would see Domenichino's frescoes in the chapel within; and as they

are among the best products of his cold and clever talent, we gasp and

push on,--the most resolute alone getting through. Here in this old

monastery, as the story goes, he sought refuge from the fierce Salvator

Rosa, by whom his life was threatened, and here he painted his best

works, shaking in his shoes with fear. When we have examined these

frescoes, we have done the fair of Grotta-Ferrata; and those of us who

are wise and have brought with us a well-packed hamper stick in our hat

one of the red artificial roses which everybody wears, take a charming

drive to the Villa Conti, Muti, or Falconieri, and there, under the

ilexes, forget the garlic, finish the day with a picnic, and return to

Rome when the western sun is painting the Alban Hill.

And here, in passing, one word on the onions and garlic, whose odor

issues from the mouths of every Italian crowd, like the fumes from

the maw of Fridolin's dragon. Everybody eats them in Italy; the upper

classes show them to their dishes to give them a flavor, and the lower

use them not only as a flavor, but as a food. When only a formal

introduction of them is made to a dish, I confess that the result is

far from disagreeable; but that close, intimate, and absorbing relation

existing between them and the lowest classes is frightful. _Senza

complimenti_, it is "tolerable and not to be endured." When a poor man

can procure a raw onion and a hunch of black bread, he does not want a

dinner; and towards noon many and many a one may be seen sitting like

a king upon a door-step, or making a statuesque finish to a _palazzo

portone_, cheerfully munching this spare meal, and taking his siesta

after it, full-length upon the bare pavement, as calmly as if he were in

the perfumed chambers of the great,

"Under the canopies of costly state,

And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody."

And, indeed, so he is; for the canopy of the soft blue sky is above him,

and the plashing fountains lull him to his dreams. Nor is he without

ancient authority for his devotion to those twin saints, Cipolla and

Aglio. There is an "odor of sanctity" about them, turn up our noses

as we may. The Ancient Egyptians offered them as firstfruits upon the

altars of their gods, and employed them also in the services for the

dead; and such was their attachment to them, that the followers of Moses

hankered after them despite the manna, and longed for "the leeks and the

onions and the garlic which they did eat in Egypt freely." Nay, even the

fastidious Greeks not only used them as a charm against the Evil Eye,

but ate them with delight. And in the "Banquet" of Xenophon, Socrates

specially recommends them. On this occasion, several curious reasons

for their use are adduced, of which we who despise them should not be

ignorant. Niceratus says that they relish well with wine, citing Homer

in confirmation of his opinion; Callias affirms that they inspire

courage in battle; and Charmidas clenches the matter by declaring that

they are most useful in "deceiving a jealous wife, who, finding her

husband return with his breath smelling of onions, would be induced to

believe he had not saluted any one while from home." Despise them not,

therefore, O Saxon! for as "their offence is rank," their pedigree is

long, and they are sacred plants that "smell to heaven." Happily for

you, if these reasons do not persuade you against your will, there is a

certain specific against them,--_Eat them yourself_, and you will smell

them no longer.

The time of the church processions is now coming, and one good specimen

takes place on the 29th of March, from the Santa Maria in Via, which

may stand with little variations for all the others. These processions,

which are given by every church once a year, are in honor of the

Madonna, or some saint specially reverenced in the particular church.

They make the circuit of the parish limits, passing through all its

principal streets, and every window and balcony is decorated with yellow

and crimson hangings, and with crowds of dark eyes. The front of the

church, the steps, and the street leading to it, are spread with yellow

sand, over which are scattered sprigs of box. After the procession

has been organized in the church, they "come unto the yellow sands,"

preceded by a band of music, which plays rather jubilant, and what the

uncopious would call profane music, polkas and marches, and airs

from the operas. Next follow great lanterns of strung glass drops,

accompanied by soldiers; then an immense gonfalon representing the

Virgin at the Cross, which swings backwards and forwards, borne by the

_confraternità_ of the parish, with blue capes over their white dresses,

and all holding torches. Then follows a huge wooden cross, garlanded

with golden ivy-leaves, and also upheld by the _confraternità_, who

stagger under its weight. Next come two crucifixes, covered, as the body

of Christ always is during Lent and until Resurrection-Day, with cloth

of purple, (the color of passion,) and followed by the _frati_ of the

church in black, carrying candles and dolorously chanting a hymn. Then

comes the bishop in his mitre, his yellow stole upheld by two principal

priests, (the curate and subcurate,) and to him his acolytes waft

incense, as well as to the huge figure of the Madonna which follows.

This figure is of life-size, carved in wood, surrounded by gilt angels,

and so heavy that sixteen stout _facchini_, whose shabby trousers show

under their improvised costume, are required to bear it along. With this

the procession comes to its climax. Immediately after follow the guards,

and a great concourse of the populace closes the train.

As Holy Week approaches, pilgrims begin to flock to Rome with their

oil-cloth capes, their scallop-shell, their long staffs, their rosaries,

and their dirty hands held out constantly for "_una santa elemosina pel

povero pellegrino_." Let none of my fair friends imagine that she will

find a Romeo among them, or she will be most grievously disappointed.

There is something to touch your pity in their appearance, though not

the pity akin to love. They are, for the most part, old, shabby, and

soiled, and inveterate mendicants,--and though, some time or other,

some one or other may have known one of them for her true-love, "by his

cockle hat and staff, and his sandal shoon," that time has been long

forbye, unless they are wondrously disguised. Besides these pilgrims,

and often in company with them, bands of peasants, with their long

staffs, may be met on the road, making a pilgrimage to Rome for the Holy

Week, clad in splendid _ciocciari_ dresses, carrying their clothes on

their heads, and chanting a psalm as they go. Among these may be found

many a handsome youth and beautiful maid, whose faces will break into

the most charming of smiles as you salute them and wish them a happy

pilgrimage. And of all smiles, none is so sudden, open, and enchanting

as a Roman girl's; and breaking over their dark, passionate faces, black

eyes, and level brows, it seems like a burst of sunlight from behind a

cloud. There must be noble possibilities in any nation which, through

all its oppression and degradation, has preserved the childlike

frankness of the Italian smile. Still another indication of the approach

of Holy Week is the Easter egg, which now makes its appearance, and

warns us of the solemnities to come. Sometimes it is stained yellow,

purple, red, green, or striped with various colors; sometimes it is

crowned with paste-work, representing, in a most primitive way, a

hen,--her body being the egg, and her pastry-head adorned with a

disproportionately tall feather. These eggs are exposed for sale at

the corners of the streets and bought by everybody, and every sort of

ingenious device is resorted to, to attract customers and render them

attractive. This custom is probably derived from the East, where the egg

is the symbol of the primitive state of the world and of the creation

of things. The new year formerly began at the spring equinox, at about

Easter; and at that period of the renewal of Nature, a festival was

celebrated in the new moon of the month Phamenoth, in honor of Osiris,

when painted and gilded eggs were exchanged as presents, in reference to

the beginning of all things. The transference of the commencement of the

year to January deprived the Paschal egg of its significance. Formerly

in France, and still in Russia as in Italy, it had a religious

significance, and was never distributed until it had received a solemn

benediction. On Good Friday, a priest, with his robes and an attendant,

may be seen going into every door in the street to bless the house, the

inhabitants, and the eggs. The last, colored and arranged according to

the taste of the individual, are spread upon a table, which is decorated

with box, flowers, and whatever ornamental dishes the family possesses.

The priest is received with bows at the door, and when the benediction

is over he is rewarded with the gratuity of a _paul_ or a _scudo_,

according to the piety and purse of the proprietor; while into the

basket of his attendant is always dropped a _pagnotta_, a couple of

eggs, a _baiocco_, or some such trifle. [Footnote: Beside the blessing

of the eggs and house, it is the custom in some parts of Italy, (and I

have particularly observed it in Siena,) for the priest, at Easter, to

affix to the door of the chief _palazzi_ and villas a waxen cross, or

the letter M in wax, so as to guard the house from evil spirits. But

only the houses of the rich are thus protected; for the priests bestow

favors only "for a consideration," which the poor cannot so easily

give.]

It is on this day, too, that the customary Jew is converted, recants,

and is baptized; and there are not wanting evil tongues which declare

that there is a wonderful similarity in his physiognomy every year.

However this may be, there is no doubt that some one is annually dug out

of the Ghetto, which is the pit of Judaism here in Rome; and if he fall

back again, after receiving the temporal reward, and without waiting for

the spiritual, he probably finds it worth his while to do so, in view of

the zeal of the Church, and in remembrance of the fifteenth verse of the

twenty-third chapter of Matthew, if he ever reads that portion of the

Bible. It is in the great basaltic vase in the baptistery of St. John

Lateran, the same in which Rienzi bathed in 1347, before receiving the

insignia of knighthood, that the converted Jew, and any other infidel

who can be brought over, receives his baptism when he is taken into the

arms of the Church.

It is at this season, too, that the _pizzicarolo_ shops are gayly

dressed in the manner so graphically described by Hans Andersen in his

"Improvisatore." No wonder, that, to little Antonio, the interior of

one of these shops looked like a realization of Paradise; for they are

really splendid; and when glittering with candles and lamps at night,

the effect is very striking. Great sides of bacon and lard are ranged

endwise in regular bars all around the interior, and adorned with

stripes of various colors, mixed with golden spangles and flashing

tinsel; while over and under them, in reticulated work, are piled scores

upon scores of brown cheeses, in the form of pyramids, columns, towers,

with eggs set into their interstices. From the ceiling, and all around

the doorway, hang wreaths and necklaces of sausages, or groups of the

long gourd-like _cacio di cavallo_, twined about with box, or netted

wire baskets filled with Easter eggs, or great bunches of white candles

gathered together at the wicks. Seen through these, at the bottom of the

shop, is a picture of the Madonna, with scores of candles burning about

it, and gleaming upon the tinsel hangings and spangles with which it

is decorated. Underneath this, there is often represented an elaborate

_presepio_,--or, when this is not the case, the animals may be seen

mounted here and there on the cheeses. Candelabra of eggs, curiously

bound together, so as to resemble bunches of gigantic white grapes,

swung from the centre of the ceiling, and cups of colored glass, with a

taper in them, or red paper lanterns, and _terra-cotta_ lamps, of the

antique form, show here and there their little flames among the flitches

of bacon and cheeses; while, in the midst of all this splendor, the

figure of the _pizzicarolo_ moves to and fro, like a high-priest at a

ceremony. Nor is this illumination exclusive. The doors, often of the

full width of the shop, are thrown wide open, and the glory shines upon

all passers-by. It is the apotheosis of ham and cheese, at which only

the Hebraic nose, doing violence to its natural curve, turns up in

scorn; while true Christians crowd around it to wonder and admire, and

sometimes to venture in upon the almost enchanted ground. May it be long

before this pleasant custom dies out!

At last comes Holy Week, with its pilgrims that flock from every part

of the world. Every hotel and furnished apartment is crowded,--every

carriage is hired at double and treble its ordinary fare,--every door,

where a Papal ceremony is to take place, is besieged by figures in black

with black veils. The streets are filled with Germans, English, French,

Americans, all on the move, coming and going, and anxiously inquiring

about the _funzioni_, and when they are to take place, and where,--for

everything is kept in a charming condition of perfect uncertainty, from

the want of any public newspaper or journal, or other accurate means of

information. So everybody asks everybody, and everybody tells everybody,

until nobody knows anything, and everything is guesswork. But,

nevertheless, despite impatient words, and muttered curses, and all

kinds of awkward mistakes, the battle goes bravely on. There is terrible

fighting at the door of the Sistine Chapel, to hear the _Miserere_,

which is sure to be Baini's when it is said to be Allegri's, as well as

at the railing of the Chapel, where the washing of the feet takes place,

and at the supper-table, where twelve country-boors represent the

Apostolic company, and are waited on by the Pope, in a way that shows

how great a sham the whole thing is. The air is close to suffocation in

this last place. Men and women faint and are carried out. Some fall and

are trodden down. Sometimes, as at the table this year, some unfortunate

pays for her curiosity with her life. It is "Devil take the

hindmost!" and if any one is down, he is leaped over by men and women

indiscriminately, for there is no time to be lost. In the Chapel, when

once they are in, all want to get out. Shrieks are heard as the jammed

mass sways backward and forward,--veils and dresses are torn in the

struggle,--women are praying for help. Meantime the stupid Swiss keep to

their orders with a literalness which knows no parallel; and all this

time, the Pope, who has come in by a private door, is handing round beef

and mustard and bread and potatoes to the gormandizing Apostles, who put

into their pockets what their stomachs cannot hold, and improve their

opportunities in every way. At last, those who have been through the

fight return at nightfall, haggard and ghastly with fear, hunger, and

fatigue; and, after agreeing that they could never counsel any one to

such an attempt, set off the next morning to attack again some shut door

behind which a "function" is to take place.

All this, however, is done by the strangers. The Romans, on these high

festivals, do not go to Saint Peter's, but perform their religious

services at their parish churches, calmly and peacefully; for in Saint

Peter's all is a spectacle. "How shall I, a true son of the Holy

Church," asks Pasquin, "obtain admittance to her services?" And Marforio

answers, "Declare you are an Englishman, and swear you are a heretic."

The Piazza is crowded with carriages during all these days, and a

hackman will look at nothing under a _scudo_ for the smallest distance,

and, to your remonstrances, he shrugs his shoulders and says, "_Eh,

signore, bisogna vivere; adesso è la nostra settimana, e poi niente._

Next week I will take you anywhere for two _pauls_,--now for fifteen."

Meluccio, (the little old apple,) the aged boy in the Piazza San Pietro,

whose sole occupation it has been for years to open and shut the doors

of carriages--and hold out his hand for a _mezzo-baiocco_, is in great

glee. He runs backwards and forwards all day long,--hails carriages like

mad,--identifies to the bewildered coachmen their lost fares, whom he

never fails to remember,--points out to bewildered strangers the coach

they are hopelessly striving to identify, having entirely forgotten

coachman and carriage in the struggle they have gone through. He is

everywhere, screaming, laughing, and helping everybody. It is his high

festival as well as the Pope's, and grateful strangers drop into his

hand the frequent _baiocco_ or half-_paul_, and thank God and Meluccio

as they sink back in their carriages and cry, "_A casa_."

Finally comes Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection; and at twelve

on the Saturday previous all the bells are rung, and the crucifixes

uncovered, and the Pope, cardinals, and priests change their

mourning-vestments for those of rejoicing. Easter has come. You may know

it by the ringing bells, and the sound of trumpets in the street, and

the jar of long trains of cannon going down to the Piazza San Pietro, to

guard the place and join in the dance, in case of a row or rising

among the populace; for the right arm of the Church is the cannon, and

Christ's doctrines are always protected by the bayonet, and Peter's

successor "making broad his phylacteries," and his splendid _cortége_

"enlarging the borders of their garments" and going up to "the chief

seats in the synagogues" "in purple and fine linen" to make their "long

prayers," crave the protection of bristling arms and drawn swords.

By twelve o'clock Mass in Saint Peter's is over, and the Piazza is

crowded with people to see the Benediction,--and a grand and imposing

spectacle it is! Out over the great balcony stretches a huge white

awning, where priests and attendants are collected, and where the Pope

will soon be seen. Below, the Piazza is alive with moving masses. In the

centre are drawn up long lines of soldiery, with yellow and red pompons

and glittering helmets and bayonets. These are surrounded by crowds on

foot, and at the outer rim are packed carriages filled and overrun with

people mounted on the seats and boxes. There is a half-hour's waiting

while we can look about, a steady stream of carriages all the while

pouring in, and, if one could see it, stretching out a mile behind, and

adding thousands of impatient spectators to those already there. What a

sight it is!--above us the great dome of Saint Peter's, and below, the

grand embracing colonnade, and the vast space, in the centre of which

rises the solemn obelisk thronged with masses of living beings. Peasants

from the Campagna and the mountains are moving about everywhere.

Pilgrims in oil-cloth cape and with iron staff demand charity. On the

steps are rows of purple, blue, and brown umbrellas; for there the sun

blazes fiercely. Everywhere cross forth the white hoods of Sisters of

Charity, collected in groups, and showing, among the party-colored

dresses, like beds of chrysanthemums in a garden. One side of the

massive colonnade casts a grateful shadow over the crowd beneath, that

fill up the intervals of its columns; but elsewhere the sun burns down

and flashes everywhere. Mounted on the colonnade are masses of people

leaning over, beside the colossal statues. Through all the heat is heard

the constant plash of the two superb fountains, that wave to and fro

their veils of white spray. At last the clock strikes. In the far

balcony are seen the two great snowy peacock fans, and between them a

figure clad in white, that rises from a golden chair, and spreads his

great sleeves like wings as he raises his arms in benediction. That is

the Pope, Pius the Ninth. All is dead silence, and a musical voice,

sweet and penetrating, is heard chanting from the balcony;--the people

bend and kneel; with a cold, gray flash, all the bayonets gleam as the

soldiers drop to their knees, and rise to salute as the voice dies away,

and the two white wings are again waved;--then thunder the cannon,--the

bells dash and peal,--a few white papers, like huge snowflakes, drop

wavering from the balcony;--these are Indulgences, and there is an eager

struggle for them below;--then the Pope again rises, again gives his

benediction, waving to and fro his right hand, three fingers open, and

making the sign of the cross,--and the peacock fans retire, and he

between them is borne away,--and Lent is over.

As Lent is ushered in by the dancing lights of the _moccoletti_, so it

is ushered out by the splendid illumination of Saint Peter's, which is

one of the grandest spectacles in Rome. The first illumination is by

means of paper lanterns, distributed everywhere along the architectural

lines of the church, and from the steps beneath its portico to the cross

above its dome. These are lighted before sunset, and against the blaze

of the western light are for some time completely invisible; but as

twilight thickens, and the shadows deepen, and a gray pearly veil is

drawn over the sky, the distant basilica begins to glow against it with

a dull furnace-glow, as of a wondrous coal fanned by a constant wind;

looking not so much lighted from without as reddening from an interior

fire. Slowly this splendor grows, until the mighty building at last

stands outlined against the dying twilight as if etched there with

a fiery burin. As the sky darkens into intense blue behind it, the

material part of the basilica seems to vanish, until nothing is left to

the eye but a wondrous, magical, visionary structure of fire. This is

the silver illumination; watch it well, for it does not last long. At

the first hour of night, when the bells sound all over Rome, a sudden

change takes place. From the lofty cross a burst of flame is seen, and

instantly a flash of light whirls over the dome and drum, climbs the

smaller cupolas, descends like a rain of fire down the columns of the

_facade_, and before the great bell of Saint Peter's has ceased to toll

twelve peals, the golden illumination has succeeded to the silver. For

my own part, I prefer the first illumination; it is more delicate, airy,

and refined, though the second is more brilliant and dazzling. One is

like the Bride of the Church, the other like the Empress of the World.

In the second lighting, the Church becomes more material; the flames

are like jewels, and the dome seems a gigantic triple crown of Saint

Peter's. One effect, however, is very striking. The outline of fire,

which before was firm and motionless, now wavers and shakes as if it

would pass away, as the wind blows the flames back and forth from the

great cups by which it is lighted. From near and far the world looks

on,--from the Piazza beneath, where carriages drive to and fro in its

splendor, and the band plays and the bells toll,--from the windows and

_loggias_ of the city, wherever a view can be caught of this superb

spectacle,--and from the Campagna and mountain towns, where, far

away, alone and towering above everything, the dome is seen to blaze.

Everywhere are ejaculations of delight, and thousands of groups are

playing the game of "What is it like?" One says, it is like a hive

covered by a swarm of burning bees; others, that it is the enchanted

palace in the gardens of Gul in the depths of the Arabian nights,--like

a gigantic tiara set with wonderful diamonds, larger than those which

Sinbad found in the roc's valley,--like the palace of the fairies in the

dreams of childhood,--like the stately pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan in

Xanadu, and twenty other whimsical things. At nearly midnight, when

we go to bed, we take a last look at it. It is a ruin, like the

Colosseum,--great gaps of darkness are there, with broken rows of

splendor. The lights are gone on one side the dome,--they straggle

fitfully here and there down the other and over the _façade_, fading

even as we look. It is melancholy enough. It is a bankrupt heiress, an

old and wrinkled beauty, that tells strange tales of its former wealth

and charms, when the world was at its feet. It is the once mighty

Catholic Church, crumbling away with the passage of the night,--and when

morning and light come, it will be no more.

[To be continued.]

LA MALANOTTE.

One morning in Naples, in the spring of ----, I was practising over

some operas of Rossini with a musical friend. He had known the great

_maestro_ personally, and his intelligence on musical matters, his

numberless anecdotes and reminiscences, made him a charming companion;

he was a living, talking Scudo article, full of artistic _mots_ and

_ana_. We had just finished looking over the "Tancredi," and, as I sat

down to rest in an arm-chair near the window, he leaned back in the deep

window-embrasure, and looked down into the fine old garden below, from

which arose the delicious odor of orange and young grape blossoms.

"I was in Venice," he said, "when this opera was composed, in 1813. _Mon

Dieu_! how time flies! Rossini wrote it for one of the loveliest women

God ever made, Adelaïde Montresor. I knew her very well. She was the

wife of a French gentleman, a friend of mine, M. Montresor, at one time

very prosperous in fortune. Adelaide was a Veronese, of good family, and

had studied music only _en amateur_. Her maiden name was Malanotte. Oh,

yes, of course, you have heard of her. She was famous, poor child, in

her day, which was a short one."

The old gentleman sighed, and threw the end of his cigar out of the

window. I handed him another; for his age and charming conversation

entitled him to such indulgences. He remained silent a little

while, puffing away at his cigar until it was well lighted; then he

continued:--

"I think I'll tell you poor Adelaide's story. She was a delicious young

creature when Montresor married her,--scarcely more than a child. For

some years they lived delightfully; they had plenty of money, and were

very fond of each other. She had two charming little children; one was

my godson and namesake, Ettore. Montresor, her husband, was surely one

of the happiest of men.

"They were both musical. Montresor had a clever barytone voice, and

sang with sufficient grace and memory for an amateur. Adelaide was more

remarkable than her husband; she had genius more than culture, and sang

good old music with an unconscious creative grace. At their house we

used to get up 'Il Matrimonio Segreto,' _scenas_ from 'Don Giovanni,'

and many other passages from favorite operas; and Adelaide was always

our admired _prima donna_; for she, as Fétis says of genius, 'invented

forms, imposed them as types, and obliged us not only to acknowledge,

but to imitate them.'

"I had to go to Russia in 1805, and leave my home and friends for an

indefinite period of time. When I bade the Montresors good-bye,

I wondered what sorrow could touch them, they seemed so shielded by

prosperity from every accident; but some one has said very justly of

prosperity, that it is like glass,--it shines brightest just before

shivering. A year after I left, Montresor, who had foolishly entered

into some speculations, lost all his fortune. In a fortnight after the

event, Veronese society was electrified by the public announcement of

Madame Montresor's first appearance in public as an opera-singer. I

forget what her opening piece was. She wrote to me about it, telling

me that her _début_ was successful, but that she felt she needed more

preparation, and should devote the following year to studies necessary

to insure success in her profession. Her letters had no murmurs in

them about the lost fortune, no moans over the sacrifice of her social

position. She possessed true genius, and felt most happy in the exercise

of her music, even if it took sorrow, toil, and poverty to develop it.

Her whole thoughts were on the plan of studies laid down for her. Now

she could be an artist conscientiously. She had obtained the

rare advantage of lessons from some famous retired singer at

Milan,--Marchesi, I think,--and her letters were filled with learned

and enthusiastic details of her master's method, her manner of study,

regimen, and exercise,--enough to make ten Catalanis, I saucily wrote

back to her.

"Once in a while she would send me a notice of her success at some

concert or minor theatre. At last, in 1813, seven years after her

girlish _début_ at Verona, she received an engagement at Venice. At

that time I obtained _congé_ for a few months, and, on my home-journey,

stopped a few weeks at Venice, to see some relatives living there, and

my old friends, the Montresors. The seven-years' hard study and public

life had developed the pretty _petite_ girl-matron into a charming woman

and fine artist. She was as _naïve_ and frank as in her girlish days,

though not so playful,--more self-possessed, and completely engrossed

with her art. Her domestic life was gone; she lived and breathed only in

the atmosphere of her profession, and happily her husband sympathized

with her, and generously regarded her triumphs as his own. The first

morning I saw her, I was struck with her excited air; a deep crimson

spot was on each cheek, which made her eyes, formerly so soft in their

expression, painfully sharp in their brilliancy.

"'I sang for Rossini last night,' she said, in a quick tone, after our

first greeting was over; then continued, with her old, frank _naïveté_,

'I did not know he was in the theatre. I am so glad! for otherwise I

might not have done myself justice.'

"'He was pleased, of course,' I replied.

"'Yes; he was here this morning. He is a charming person,--so graceful

and complaisant! Montresor and I were delighted with him. He is to

compose an opera for me.'

"Her whole form seemed to dilate with pride. She walked up and down the

_salon_ with unconscious restlessness while she talked, went to a stand

of flowers, and, leaning her burning face over the fragrant blossoms,

drew in sharp, rapid breaths of their odors. She plucked off a white

tea-rose, and pressed its yellow core against her cheeks, as if she

fancied the fresh white color of the flower would cool them. Every look,

every movement, every expression that shot rapidly over her varying

face, as quickly as the ripples on water under the hot noonday sunlight,

spoke more plainly than words her intense longing. As I recall my

beautiful friend, so possessed as I saw her then with this intense

desire for the fame of a great artist, I think of two lines in a little

song I have heard you sing--

"'To let the new life in, we know

Desire must ope the portal.'

"And, surely, her earnest spirit was beating with feverish haste on that

portal of her future for her new life.

"Of course we did not meet so constantly, and therefore not so

familiarly as formerly. When we did meet, she was as frank and friendly

as ever; but she was always preoccupied. She was studying daily with the

great young _maestro_ himself, then just rising to the full zenith of

his fame, and her whole thoughts were filled with the music of the new

opera he was writing, which she called glorious.

"'So grand and heroic,' she said, with enthusiasm, one morning, when

describing it, 'and yet so original and fresh! The melodies are

graceful, and the accompaniments as sparkling as these diamonds in their

brilliancy.'

"At _caffès_, where silly young men murder reputations, it was said

that Rossini was madly in love with the beautiful _prima donna;_ and of

course he was; for he could not help being in love, in his way, with

every brilliant woman he met. Numberless stories were told of the

bewitching tyranny '_La Malanotte_,' as she was called, loved to

exercise over her distinguished admirer, which were interpreted by the

uncharitable as the caprice of a mistress in the first flush of her

loving power. I had to listen in silence to such stories, and feel

grateful that Montresor did not hear them also.