and now before the ducal palace they begin to grow denser than ever,
for this is the way to the cathedral, where the Archbishop of Genoa is
to bless the palms himself, at high mass. The great steps of the Duomo
are covered with the multitude; the people press up them between the
carven lions, through the beautiful gateways, and stand thickly packed
beneath the central arch, where St. Laurence lies stretched on the
torturing irons, and still other people are fighting their way through
the piazza, and keep pouring in from the back streets. Boys and girls,
men and women, mothers with swaddled infants, children that can barely
walk alone and that have to be perched on the great lions which flank
the steps of the Duomo, that they may have a chance of a sight of the
procession; old women with ugly faces, who seem to be the more devout
for their ugliness; men, of whom many make but a poor show even of
outward respect;—all are jostled together upon the steps and in the
entrances; and within the church’s aisles more people again are moving.
[Illustration: ON-LOOKERS AT THE PROCESSION OF PALMS.]
The chanting and preaching begin within, varied now and then by the
rise and fall of barely suppressed voices throughout the nave. Then
the procession comes forth—banners and images, and crowds of children
bearing their white palms. The priest’s monotone continues within, and
the procession outside makes answer. Its flag-bearers knock upon the
gates of the church, and then the palms and the banners enter again.
There is more of the ceremony, but even the people attend but sparingly
to it. The crowd lingers awhile; some kneel on the steps to pray, some
enter the cathedral as best they can for benediction; many more wait
about outside and talk and laugh and gesticulate, but when mass is
done, mothers and fathers claim their children from out the procession,
and the multitudes disperse quietly.
The day’s afternoon is spent in the public ways and the public gardens.
Perfect enjoyment for an Italian is the enjoyment of idleness, and he
wears it with a graceful sort of sincerity. Day sinks into darkness,
but the caffès are still open. The fire must not die out too soon,
since with the morrow fasting must begin again.
So, amid laughter and jollity, _La festa delle Palme_ sinks away with
everything else that is gone into the past things of the year.
Holy Week and Easter Feasts. I Sepolcri.
The Palms are blessed and done with, fasting has begun, for even the
first week-days of the _Settimana Santa_ are ‘_giorni magri_,’ though
few folks pretend to practise any self-denial until the last three days
of the week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday pass without much ado. The
preacher-monks harangue congregations in churches, upon highways and
market-places, pouring forth strange prognostications and fiery words,
often of the most grotesque. But the _Frati predicatori_ are as nothing
in the eyes of the populace compared with the sights and wonders that
begin to multiply on Maundy Thursday. It is the day of the _Santo
Sepolcro_.
People throng the churches; a pilgrimage to one or more of them
is considered a sacred and a necessary duty. The Duomo is crowded.
Worshippers tread the aisles of _Sant’Ambrogio_, that church which
is famous to travellers for its Rubens, but to the inartistic natives
for its ashes of St. John, and at this season for its magnificence of
camellias: they kneel at its confessionals and bow before its altars
and pray before its Christs and Virgins.
The scene is strange. The priests have spread _Il Santo Sepolcro_
around the chief altar. It is arranged in every church more or
less fitly, but in every church the details are different, if the
main effect must needs be the same. Miniature gardens, meadows, and
cornfields, fashioned out of bleached and yellow grasses, with flowers
in their midst, cover the marble pavement within the altar rails;
and amid the gardens and the flowers little figures of men and women
are set talking and labouring in the fields. This is the foreground,
and in the near distance perhaps rises a tiny hill, with three nude
crosses upon it, while farther back, where the altar is wont to be,
rests—among a wealth of flowers and many gaudy trappings—the body of
the Christ in its rocky sepulchre. Hundreds of wax candles are alight
upon the reredos, and there is a soft yellow radiance in the nave.
_Sant’Ambrogio_ is famed for its flowers. To-day pillars of red and
white camellias stand high above people’s heads on either side the
chancel’s entrance, and down upon its pavement there are spring roses
and heartsease, daffodils and bright ranunculus growing among moss and
bleached grasses, or shining from out quaintly stiff posies.
People pass in and out of the churches all day. They say their prayers
to the Christ in _Sant’Ambrogio_, and then they go on to _La Maddalena_
or to _San Luca_, and say more prayers and gaze on new wonders. This is
penance and prayer-time, and people must think a little about the next
world, however much they love this one, says the good Catholic! And
these Lenten duties are not much harder than festival ones after all,
enshrined as they are in sights and sounds and beloved mysteries. _La
Madonna della Nunziata_ is another church, holding a place of honour
on this day, not so much by reason of her flowers as because of her
riches and the great number of her masses. _La Madonna della Nunziata_
is that church of most gorgeous interior, where massive columns of
rare marbles bear up a frescoed and heavily-gilded roof. It is rich
in costly decoration, in gems and bright colours. The citizens hold
it of great account and crowd thither to-day to worship at the _Santo
Sepolcro_, though they have flocked from church to church already,
and told their beads, and whispered their criticisms and little bits
of gossip, saying to themselves the while that the more churches they
visit the more ease it will be to their souls. The devout make a long
stride towards heaven on Maundy Thursday, but they have a hard day’s
work of it all the same, for when they are not on their feet they are
on their knees. It is sure to rain the whole time, if not in hearty
showers, then with a desponding fine rain out of scirocco clouds; as
indeed it ought in answer to the prayers that have bade Heaven send
moisture for all the good things of the land which are growing. The
devout do not complain. Heaven is forced to weep on this day of woe,
and all the green things of nature will spring the better meanwhile, so
they trudge contentedly, with veils that are soiled and damp (for the
devout are almost always women), and red and green umbrellas, to make
some gay-coloured things in the sad streets. They are not even too much
fatigued to go to the night ceremony at the Duomo, when the archbishop
washes the feet of the pilgrims; and even by that time the excitement
has scarcely been enough for them, but they must needs eagerly question
one another about the way in which the _Signore_ is laid out in _Santa
Catarina_ or in the _Cappucini_. And the prayers must all be prayed
before the Sepulchre, its wonders seen and conned over ere the dawn of
Good Friday, for then the spectacle must be cleared away to make room
for still graver duties. It is no doubt for the greater convenience of
Easter preparations that the Roman Church has decreed the Burial should
be solemnized before the Crucifixion—but the devout do not seem to have
a scruple as to the fitness of this arrangement, and are just as ready
for funeral ceremonies as though they had not celebrated the interment
beforehand. There are no flowers in the sanctuaries on Good Friday—all
day long there is only black drapery and sad music, and bells that
must not sound; for the Church would fain tune all to her solemn
silence until the mid-day of Saturday, when all the chimes from all the
steeples and domes break out together, and the great deep-toned bell
of the cathedral peals out afterwards alone. Easter is rung in with the
spring.
All over the country, and wherever there is a spare nook in this
town of palaces and marble, the peach and almond trees, the Judas and
apricot blossoms spread a dainty cloth of colour, while against the
rose-tinted flower of fruit-trees, lilacs and banksia roses begin to
bloom in contrast. Before the month is out laburnum and acacia will be
striving for mastery with the orange-blossoms.
A fresh wind blows over the town upon the morning of Easter-day. Ere
the sun has been up an hour house-wives are bargaining on the Piazza S.
Domenico for the peas and greens and gaudy tulips. Easter eggs are set
out for sale in confectioners’ windows, along the high streets, upon
booths in the public ways or smaller shops in the dark alleys. Every
child, rich or poor, must have an egg for his Easter morning gift.
People go to mass again, but not as they went during Holy Week, for
this day is a day of holiday-making proper.
[Illustration: MARKETING.]
Scarce can a busy marketer spare time from her early purchasing to
spend ten minutes before the altar of some church on her way, that she
may just save her soul from the neglect of a binding duty, but no one
thinks very much of mass and vesper to-day, when the _ravioli_ have
to be made before twelve o’clock, and the fish-stalls have yet to be
sought far down the town, after the green-market has duly been searched
and spoiled. ‘The priests will pray for us to-day,’ say the devout,
as they dip their fingers in holy water coming out from Benediction.
They loiter awhile before the church door to buy some image, or coin,
or rosary as they talk—or some Easter egg of crimson dye; but they are
soon home again with the peas and the marjoram and bay for the day’s
great dish, with the fresh fish and the lump of lean, solid beef, and
the brains and the sweetbread. The dinner must be cooked, or at least
superintended, the dinner must be eaten before idleness can begin. But,
when the hours have crept well into afternoon, holiday dresses begin
to flit gaily through the spring green of trees on the public gardens,
holiday voices and holiday jests ring along the broad avenues and under
the boughs of budding chestnuts. The sunshine is broad and pleasant,
there is no heat to annoy and no curt breeze to ruffle tempers; it is
really warm weather. No one wittingly gives a thought to the blushing
orchard-bloom or the blue April sky—no one speaks of the fair tulips,
the white narcissus, the lilacs and roses that are a-flower, but the
light-hearted laugh the lighter all the same for knowledge that the
spring-time is back again.
La Fantesca.
The Servant Wench.
The sky is dull and sad to-day, and so the Mediterranean is grey. Even
where the low-lying horizon clouds have parted a little to let through
a far-away memory of sunlight, it is only a whiter grey light that
outlines the margin of water and sky, and where the sea’s surface is
broken into ripples by the softest of stirring breezes, the harmonies
of shadows and relief are still in faint and faded colour-scales. It
is a scirocco. Dull and sleepy vapours rest on the mountains around and
creep down towards the town and the bay.
This picture of the Mediterranean is in shade, and the Mediterranean
city lies clouded where Maddalena dwells, so that she is not glad,
for her mistress is to give her holiday to-day because Tomasina, the
sister’s eldest, is to make first communion, and, please the Virgin,
there will be fine doings. The sister is no poor woman; she married the
_pizzicagnolo_, or sausage merchant, in Via Luccoli, and can afford to
spend a few francs. ’Tis a sad shame indeed that the day be so gloomy,
for sunshine lights many a face into smiles that else would be shy and
sallow, and sunshine accords well with holiday doings; but as _la donna
grossa_, who comes in to help scrub and chatter of a morning, assured
our Maddalena, so soon even as six o’clock this day, scirocco does not
mean rain and, when the clouds lie so languid on the hills, one may
safely don the dress of woollen stuff, for the weather is too heavy
even to let the water come down from its skies.
Maddalena’s lady, _la padrona_, lives in a strange place near San
Matteo. And San Matteo is considered so strange a quarter for the home
of a widow who retains presence enough to have gallants still if she
would, that fond relations and neighbours have actually been heard to
say _la signora Marini_ must be out of her mind. And yet the _quartiere
S. Matteo_, if not fashionable, has beauties of its own. The little
church is of old and beautiful design that stands with black and white
marble façade on the piazza, and the gateway of the palace opposite
is rich without in graceful and elaborate carving, sumptuous within
by reason of a staircase weighty with ancient glory. But the widow
does not live over the piazza nor in the grimy old palace. Behind S.
Matteo’s sanctuary is its cloister, no longer set aside for religious
uses, no longer peopled by cowled monks or demure and whitehooded nuns,
but the same for shy and tender beauty as in the old days before Italy
became a kingdom, and the Church’s institutions had come to be held
in ridicule. A carpenter’s shop has grown into shape in the recesses
of those sacred colonnades, and a carpenter’s apprentice planes his
lathes and sprinkles his shavings beneath the graceful arches, while
around and looking down into the little grassgrown courtyard, tall
houses stand in a quadrangle, and white linen hangs to dry against
the time-tinted marble: but slender columns with twisted stem and fair
carven capital still spring frankly from out a daintily moulden base
around the green enclosure, and stand in their simple beauty through
shade and sunshine of Italy.
And this is where the _padrona_ lives. Our Maddalena has been with her
for sole servant wench these seven years past. One day _la signora
Marini_ came to the town Orphan Asylum, or _Albergo dei Poveri_,
as we call it, and there sought a child whom she might educate to
domestic service. Maddalena knew nothing at first; she was but thirteen
years old and had had little teaching; but, thanks to the thrifty
housewife’s pains and wholesome influence, assisted, as it surely was,
by many a sharp word and friendly cuff, thanks also to her own bright
wits, the little orphan grew rapidly into a servant of the quickest
and deftest—into a maiden of the strongest and comeliest. Not that
Maddalena was ever tall. Though, from their first frail babyhood, the
poor little foundlings have the best care that such an institution
as the _Albergo dei Poveri_ can afford; though they be plentifully
nourished by sturdy peasant nurses, according to the country’s custom;
yet a mother’s care has never been theirs, nor have fresh field breezes
ever fanned their cheeks, and strengthened their growing forms, such
as may, perhaps, have greeted the first days of their lives. And so,
though the little damsel be a pretty girl in her own style and fit for
all life’s work, she wears a sometimes wistful look behind her simple
face, and will always be of small and dainty type, though of firm-knit
frame and wholesome strength enough. She has a warmly tinted skin with
rosy flush, and two round brown eyes wherein the sunlight could dance
as it can dance on Mediterranean waves; but to-day—since the beams
are hidden that can so brightly catch those blue sea-ripples when they
like—curling black lashes veil the bright brown eyes, and they soften
their glance and darken their sunlight into wistfulness.
[Illustration: THE SERVANT WENCH.]
It is three o’clock. The Mistress’s soup has been cooked and eaten,
the piece of dry boiled beef is removed at last from table, the dishes
are washed up, the last reproof has been administered. Maddalena
stands before her lady in all the glory of a new-patterned dress, with
silk apron, silken-fringed kerchief, brightly glowing gold brooch and
ear-drops, fresh _pezzotto_, whose white muslin folds drape her neck
and shoulders—she is ready to go. All blunders and scoldings of five
minutes ago are forgotten: the mistress is only a woman, and as a woman
she sympathises. Has she not herself smoothed those black braids whose
plaits lie round so wondrously? Has she not placed the gold pins to
secure the veil, and fastened the kerchief behind? ‘Thou hast a good
appearance, in truth,’ she remarks, complacently gazing on her work—for
Maddalena is her work, has been her work these years past—and the
girl’s blood kindles with pleasure at the praise: _la signora Marini_
knows what’s what, and would not, on _this_ occasion, take the trouble
to say what she did not mean!
The sky has not lightened with the growing day nor have the clouds
taken their load off the mountains, the scirocco is still in the
air, so that marble is less white and colour less brilliant along the
streets, but the shadow is a tender shadow, and we do not mourn the
searching sunlight. To-day is a great day at the Church of San Siro;
the first communion has been given there this morning to hundreds
of children, who now parade the streets in gala dress before going
home to join in festivities of quite a secular nature. The girls
have white dresses—satin, silk, or muslin, according to their degree,
with bridal-seeming veils and flowers—the boys wear, probably, their
first cloth suits and carry bouquets of flowers, of which they are
half ashamed. Maddalena hurries on, smiling complacently. In every
little white-robed girl she sees her own little niece, Tomasina, who
has also been this morning at San Siro, and in every escorting damsel
behind she sees herself walking beside the mamma, for is not she
the aunt of a first communion girl? It is not far from San Matteo to
Via Luccoli, and soon the little servant has climbed a dark winding
stair, has pulled a feeble bell-rope on the _5to piano_, has been
admitted and warmly embraced by many female relations, in the midst
of an admiring throng that is gathered round the little furbelowed
and perfumed doll, who stands beside her mamma. ‘What luxury!’ says
everybody, and congratulations pour from all sides upon the firstborn
and the firstborn’s parents, who have thus safely borne her to years
of discretion and the Church’s bosom. But she, poor infant, meanwhile,
being but nine years old, listens wondering, and sure only of her new
frock and her own importance, and of the comfits which are soon to be
hers.
Voices rise shrill, and jokes fly merrily. Maddalena is not of the
maddest among the guests. She stands now apart, softly conversing with
a young man from Rivarolo, who keeps a baker’s shop, and is in no way
to be despised. The shadow of the scirocco has not passed from her
eyes, and the heavy lids lie but half folded away, with long lashes
sweeping downwards; but the young man from Rivarolo does not seem to
mind that sleepy gaze, and has just made up his mind that last Sunday
shall not be the only time he follows a little maiden into the church
of Saint Ambrogio, when she goes to early mass! Now the board is spread
in this large, scantily furnished hall, where the floor is of red brick
and the walls of yellow cement, and the curtains of soft and faded
calicoes; sixteen people sit down to eat _ravioli_ and stewed beef and
truffles, to drink sour _Monferrato_ wine, and to break their teeth
over hard sugar-plums. They are all very free and friendly, and talk
loudly, all but Maddalena, who prefers to speak in whispers, but then
she is sitting beside the baker. When the evening is over it is this
same baker who walks with her slowly, in the darkness of eight o’clock,
up the steep of Via Luccoli, and along the broad way of the Carlo
Felice, till they reach the point where a narrow, brick-paved and rapid
descent runs down into San Matteo. ‘_Brava!_ thou com’st home to time,’
says the mistress, when she opens the door to the servant-wench. And
then they discuss the party and the presents, the viands, the dresses,
the conversation, and all the scandal that can possibly be gathered
from so humble an affair. ‘Well, thou hast amused thyself; to-morrow
there will be plenty to do, my child,’ says the _padrona_, as maid and
mistress retire to sleep.
And there _is_ plenty to do indeed! _La signora Marini_ has an
entertainment in honour of her name-day, and _la signora Marini_ likes
to make a show, while being at the same time economical. Mistress
and maid climb the steep hill betimes in the morning to have the
pick of the market produce in the Piazza San Domenico, and both are
a good hand at a bargain and a better hand still at a little friendly
wrangling to small purpose. Maddalena is all day long plucking fowls,
shredding beans, sorting rice, washing lettuce, rolling paste, stirring
_minestra_—graver kitchen duties the housewife attends to herself—and
when the dinner is under way the hall must be swept, and the girl has
her mistress’s hair yet to do, and her own little slip-shod person to
make neat! ‘_Dio_, how the ribs ache!’ says Maddalena, and while she
says it the feeble door-bell tinkles—the guests are there!
Every man and woman, however, has a word and a jest for the
serving-maid, which words and jests re-assure her a good deal, so
that by the time the _padrona_ is ready seated, among the company, at
the long board with the coarse tablecloth, she is herself again, and,
handing the viands, confidentially informs each guest of its chief
ingredients, recommending her own favourites to favoured ones in the
party. Only, when all are served and comfortably eating, Maddalena
does not blush to sit down on the soiled old chintz settee with the
vegetable dish in her lap. She can keep just as sharp a look-out over
the wants of the table, and feels no way guilty of neglecting any
duty—in fact, if reproved would have known quite well how to answer
that she had been on her feet all day and was tired. But no one makes
any complaint. People, on the contrary, are not afraid to exchange a
friendly word now and then with the winsome waitress; and even when the
guests are gone and the mistress goes into the kitchen to discuss the
party’s success, Maddalena gets no scolding, either for her freedom of
manner in the dining-hall, nor because ‘that young man of Rivarolo’
is there, having been brought by a third party in the shape of the
charwoman. Indeed the lady gives countenance to this affair by her
presence, and when the house is locked up, and both are alone again
for the night, the talk between them is just as much of ‘_him_’ and his
prospects as of the boiled beef and roasted capons, and of the success
of the _tagliarini_ as second course.
It is not a one-sided interest either. Maddalena has all her mistress’s
concerns just as much at heart, and the concerns of her mistress’s
aunts and uncles, and nieces and cousins as well. If the _tagliarini_
had not been a success, or the lady had failed to get her due of
compliment, the girl would have cried as copiously as when her own
new dress was spoilt, the first time of wearing, by the water-squirts
in the Pallavicini Garden at her sister’s wedding! And when _la
signora Marini_ had on that violet silk just new for the Corpus Domini
procession, Maddalena could not refrain from a friendly ejaculation
when she opened the street door to her—even though two strange
gentlemen had accompanied her back from church! It is she who greases
and plaits her lady’s hair on occasions less grand than those for which
_la pettinatrice_—or female hair-dresser—is summoned. Maddalena can do
a little of everything, and everything quite passably well, from the
mending of a bell-rope with a hairpin to the crimping and ironing of
fine muslins, the coiling of plaits, the stewing of fowls, the rolling
of paste, the sweeping of rooms, and last, but certainly not least,
the nursing of sick folk. When _la padrona’s_ aunt had the typhus, who
so deft, so patient, and so tender as the little servant wench? And
when the child of the first-floor lodger had to have leeches put on
for inflammation, did not the doctor say that he couldn’t have done it
better himself than did Maddalena? To which she had answered, ‘No—nor
half so well, being but a miserable man.’ Of course she must needs have
her cryings, and scoldings, and ill-humours, and many is the time she
has vowed to run away from the home she loves so well; but when all’s
said and done there is surely no happier place than the _4to piano_ of
that house in S. Matteo where mistress and maid live, and laugh and cry
and squabble so thoroughly.
Il Negoziante.
The Shopman.