"Unde habeas quaerit nemo, sed oportet habere."
"Fidarsi e bene, ma non fidarsi e meglio."--_Italian Proverb._
Near a fountain in one of the main streets of the west end of Rome, in
which a recumbent figure bends over his ever-gushing urn; his body half
hid from sight, and slowly dissolving in the water, under protection of
a dimly lit shrine of a gaily painted Madonna; a tarnished brass plate
with the word B---- engraved thereon, is inserted into the panels of a
dingy-looking door, out of which a long piece of dirty string dangles
through a hole. If you touch the electric cord, the shock is instantly
transmitted to the other end, and the importunate tinkling of a
well-hung bell is responded to by a clicking of the latch, when an
invisible arm pulls back the door, and your entrance is secured into a
passage encumbered with broken busts and bas-reliefs, tier above tier,
and a series of marble tablets, with _Dis manibus_ inscriptions, let
into the wall on either side. If, now, you pick your way amid the many
stumbling-blocks that beset it, till you have reached the stair, (a
narrow stair and dark, and encumbered like the passage, with numerous
relics of antiquity,) a female voice, loudly shrilling from above,
demands your business--"_Chi c'e?_"--you answer of course "_Amico_," and
are bid to mount accordingly. Arrived at the summit of the stair, that
same voice, the high-pitched key of which startled you from below,
sounds less disagreeable, now that you are close beside the fair
proprietress of it, who at once greets you affably, begs you to be
seated, has seated herself beside you, and, premising that her
"_marito_" will appear anon, has begun to ask you a hundred questions,
some of which you are relieved from answering by the actual advent of
Signor B----, who makes his politest bow, while Madame introduces you as
an old acquaintance. You see at a glance _this_ part of Signor B----'s
history, that he has bought a young and pretty wife out of many years'
traffic in antiquities. Whatever else he may at any other time have
purchased, was with intention to dispose of afterwards, a suitable
opportunity offering. But this pretty wife he keeps like an inedited
coin, or fancies that he keeps to himself entirely. Few antiquaries have
shown more enterprise than B----. Possessed of little, very little money
in his youth, he did not, like many other Roman youths of this day,
squander it away in cigars, and was under twenty when he undertook his
first commercial expedition. He went into Egypt, could not buy the
Pyramids, they were too large for his portmanteau; then into Greece;
then to Sicily. He sailed to Syracuse, landed at Naxos, sacked Taormina
and Catania; came back and sold his curiosities well; went abroad again,
and again returned like an industrious bee laden with spoils. Enriched
at length by these numerous journeys, he was able to purchase a
vineyard, and to plant it. His next step was to build a villa upon it,
and to marry an ancient dame, who, dying shortly, left him at liberty to
marry again. The lady whom he now calls his own being at the time poor,
his treasures soon won her heart, while his house flattered her
ambition, and so they made a match of it; and she now accompanies him in
most of his antiquarian prowling excursions during the summer; and the
_menage_, on the whole, for an Italian menage, goes on well enough.
One day--(this was when, by much frequentation of the premises, we had
become intimate with its inmates)--one day we had just been _ringing_ an
Etruscan vase, and liked the sound thereof; and examining the painting,
we liked that too; and therefore, agreeing as to price, completed the
purchase, and were sitting between old husband and young wife, round a
brazier mounted on an ancient tripod, with a handful of gems, _loculis
quae custoditur eburnis_, talking carelessly, and taking our
_impressions_ of them, and of the stones, as we talked. It was a fete
day, and, now we came to notice it, Madame B---- was en _grande
toilette_, and had been hearing Padre S---- preach, as she informed us,
at St Carlo's in the Corso. When she heard we had not been there, she
sighed for our sakes--"Our friend _should_ have heard Padre S----
to-day, is it not so?" to her husband, who assented to this good opinion
of the Padre: "It was such a good sermon! all about doing as you would
be done by--no loophole for a self-deceiver to escape by. I only wish
A---- had been there to hear it." "Bagatello!" said Signor B----,
stirring the brazier, "Do you think he would not have cheated Lord V----
just the same in this head of Medusa, which he palmed off upon him for
an antique, knowing it was a Calandrelli? Good sermons are thrown away
upon some people." "Well," sighed the lady, looking up to the ceiling,
and then taking a second dose of it--"well, at least we may apply it _to
ourselves_." "Not a bit of it. _We_ never apply any thing to ourselves.
Do you think, for instance, when I married you, I sought to mate me with
a lark, or a nightingale--_risponde_." She had no difficulty in doing
so. "And was I not a lark till my poor sister died--_poverella_--eighteen
months ago?" "_Si, Signora!_ but _since_ that time you treat me with
coldness; are always looking up to the sky; and always telling me your
soul is with her soul in Paradise. No Paradise for me! What think you,
sir?" "We always sided with those who were suffering from the loss of
friends." "_Bene, bene_, for three months or so--'twas all very well,
natural. But beyond this? Besides, though it were ever so sincere--what
was the use of it?" "Oh! of _no use_, of course," said we. "I shall
never give over mourning for her, I promise you that," said the lady,
much moved. The husband shrugged his shoulders; said, "That all women
were more or less foolish;" and asked us if we were married? Before we
had time to answer, in came Padre S----, whose sermon had made such
impression on B---- and his wife. We now sit all around the brazier;
both wife and husband being, for some time, loud in their praises, which
were somewhat extravagant! "It was a divine sermon--St Paul could not
have preached a better"--when the good man hopes it may, by God's
blessing, do good, politely acknowledges the compliment implied in our
regrets that we had not been of the auditory, and then rises to look
round, Signor B---- doing the honours, at the curiosities of the shop;
at the sight of several objects of virtu, he expresses, somewhat
naively, great pleasure--would like to have seen more, but has another
sermon to deliver in St Jacomo--the bell is ringing!--he must say _idio_
at once. As he makes his exit, (Madame kisses his hand first,) two other
visitors present themselves; the one a young Roman, who comes to console
her; the other a young English nobleman, who comes to buy in haste, and
will have to repent at leisure afterwards. In five minutes, Madame seems
to have entirely forgotten her sister; B---- his wife! The one is
receiving comfort in compliment; the other, in cash! Hush! Surely we
heard Lord A---- ask if that vamped old vase, which will fall some day
to pieces, was _antique_; and B----assert that it was! Why, the paint is
scarcely dry on its sides! Lord A----'s unlucky eye lights upon a bust,
which, when he gets it over to England, he may match at the stone-mason's
in the New Road, and at half-price--_two_ words, _three_ syllables,
and the purchase is made "_Chi?_" Whose bust is it? "Cicero's," of course!
"Quanto," what's the price of it? "Twenty Napoleons!" You old rogue B----!
you are safe in sending it to Terny's, _packed_; for, if it should be
seen, you might have to refund the purchase-money. _Necdum finitus?_
Another bust tempts him; he inquires, and finds it is a _Jove_--a Jove!
and is
"Jupiter, haec nec labra moves, quum mittere vocem
Debueras, vel _marmoreus_, vel aheneus?
... Quod nullum discrimen habendum est
Effigies inter vestras, statuamque Bathylli?"
And this too, he buys for twenty Napoleons more; and having paid the
purchase-money, away goes the possessor of Jupiter, and at the same
juncture away goes the Cavaliere--each perfectly satisfied with his
visit.
"_Molto intelligente_, that countryman of yours," said B----, spelling
his card. "He seems to take things very much upon trust," said we. "'Tis
a pity he don't understand Italian or French better. Otherwise, I
_might_ have perhaps suggested better things than those he has actually
chosen. But after all," added he, "people don't like being put out of
conceit with their own opinions; and think you personally interested, if
you offer yours unasked." "I should have been sorry to have taken that
vase as antique, as he has done; or to have paid the tenth of the price
he has paid you for it." "Oh! don't be afraid; he can afford it--an
English gentleman!--and to _him_ it is worth what he paid for it; else,
if he did not think so, who forced him to take it?" "I _wonder_ now what
Father S---- would have said to it;" asked Madame of her husband,
looking up to the ceiling, and sighing. "Nothing, 'twas not in his
province to pronounce judgment in such a matter." We too _wondered_,
perhaps, what he might have said to Madame, touching her Cavaliere,
whose discourse seemed to have told almost as powerfully on her as
_his_ sermon at St Carlo's. We wondered, but _to ourselves_, and making
the common-place remark, that it seemed easier to _preach_ than to
_practise_, exchanged smiles with B---- and his wife, and withdrew, to
think over what we had seen; and to arrive at our own conclusions,
touching the general utility of fashionable and popular preaching!