was wanted. Everybody helped the captain into his boat. Everybody
got his luggage, and said we were going. The captain rowed away,
and disappeared behind a little jutting corner of the Galleyslaves'
Prison: and presently came back with something, very
sulkily. The brave Courier met him at the side, and received the
something as its rightful owner. It was a wicker basket, folded in
a linen cloth; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a roast
fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of bread, a
dozen or so of peaches, and a few other trifles. When we had
selected our own breakfast, the brave Courier invited a chosen
party to partake of these refreshments, and assured them that they
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need not be deterred by motives of delicacy, as he would order a
second basket to be furnished at their expense. Which he did - no
one knew how - and by-and-by, the captain being again summoned,
again sulkily returned with another something; over which my
popular attendant presided as before: carving with a clasp-knife,
his own personal property, something smaller than a Roman sword.
The whole party on board were made merry by these unexpected
supplies; but none more so than a loquacious little Frenchman, who
got drunk in five minutes, and a sturdy Cappuccino Friar, who had
taken everybody's fancy mightily, and was one of the best friars in
the world, I verily believe.
He had a free, open countenance; and a rich brown, flowing beard;
and was a remarkably handsome man, of about fifty. He had come up
to us, early in the morning, and inquired whether we were sure to
be at Nice by eleven; saying that he particularly wanted to know,
because if we reached it by that time he would have to perform
Mass, and must deal with the consecrated wafer, fasting; whereas,
if there were no chance of his being in time, he would immediately
breakfast. He made this communication, under the idea that the
brave Courier was the captain; and indeed he looked much more like
it than anybody else on board. Being assured that we should arrive
in good time, he fasted, and talked, fasting, to everybody, with
the most charming good humour; answering jokes at the expense of
friars, with other jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying that,
friar as he was, he would engage to take up the two strongest men
on board, one after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along
the deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he could
have done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in
the Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly that
can well be.
All this had given great delight to the loquacious Frenchman, who
gradually patronised the Friar very much, and seemed to commiserate
him as one who might have been born a Frenchman himself, but for an
unfortunate destiny. Although his patronage was such as a mouse
might bestow upon a lion, he had a vast opinion of its
condescension; and in the warmth of that sentiment, occasionally
rose on tiptoe, to slap the Friar on the back.
When the baskets arrived: it being then too late for Mass: the
Friar went to work bravely: eating prodigiously of the cold meat
and bread, drinking deep draughts of the wine, smoking cigars,
taking snuff, sustaining an uninterrupted conversation with all
hands, and occasionally running to the boat's side and hailing
somebody on shore with the intelligence that we MUST be got out of
this quarantine somehow or other, as he had to take part in a great
religious procession in the afternoon. After this, he would come
back, laughing lustily from pure good humour: while the Frenchman
wrinkled his small face into ten thousand creases, and said how
droll it was, and what a brave boy was that Friar! At length the
heat of the sun without, and the wine within, made the Frenchman
sleepy. So, in the noontide of his patronage of his gigantic
protege, he lay down among the wool, and began to snore.
It was four o'clock before we were released; and the Frenchman,
dirty and woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping when the Friar
and dress, that we might make a decent appearance at the
procession; and I saw no more of the Frenchman until we took up our
station in the main street to see it pass, when he squeezed himself
into a front place, elaborately renovated; threw back his little
coat, to show a broad-barred velvet waistcoat, sprinkled all over
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with stars; then adjusted himself and his cane so as utterly to
bewilder and transfix the Friar, when he should appear.
The procession was a very long one, and included an immense number
of people divided into small parties; each party chanting nasally,
on its own account, without reference to any other, and producing a
most dismal result. There were angels, crosses, Virgins carried on
flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns, saints, missals,
infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics, dignitaries of the church in
green hats, walking under crimson parasols: and, here and there, a
species of sacred street-lamp hoisted on a pole. We looked out
anxiously for the Cappuccini, and presently their brown robes and
corded girdles were seen coming on, in a body.
I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that when the
Friar saw him in the broad-barred waistcoat, he would mentally
exclaim, 'Is that my Patron! THAT distinguished man!' and would be
covered with confusion. Ah! never was the Frenchman so deceived.
As our friend the Cappuccino advanced, with folded arms, he looked
straight into the visage of the little Frenchman, with a bland,
serene, composed abstraction, not to be described. There was not
the faintest trace of recognition or amusement on his features; not
the smallest consciousness of bread and meat, wine, snuff, or
cigars. 'C'est lui-meme,' I heard the little Frenchman say, in
some doubt. Oh yes, it was himself. It was not his brother or his
nephew, very like him. It was he. He walked in great state:
being one of the Superiors of the Order: and looked his part to
admiration. There never was anything so perfect of its kind as the
contemplative way in which he allowed his placid gaze to rest on
us, his late companions, as if he had never seen us in his life and
didn't see us then. The Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat
at last, but the Friar still passed on, with the same imperturbable
serenity; and the broad-barred waistcoat, fading into the crowd,
was seen no more.
The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry that shook all
the windows in the town. Next afternoon we started for Genoa, by
the famed Cornice road.
The half-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who undertook, with his
little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither in three
days, was a careless, good-looking f
ellow, whose light-heartedness
and singing propensities knew no bounds as long as we went on
smoothly. So long, he had a word and a smile, and a flick of his
whip, for all the peasant girls, and odds and ends of the
Sonnambula for all the echoes. So long, he went jingling through
every little village, with bells on his horses and rings in his
ears: a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness. But, it was
highly characteristic to see him under a slight reverse of
circumstances, when, in one part of the journey, we came to a
narrow place where a waggon had broken down and stopped up the
road. His hands were twined in his hair immediately, as if a
combination of all the direst accidents in life had suddenly fallen
on his devoted head. He swore in French, prayed in Italian, and
went up and down, beating his feet on the ground in a very ecstasy
of despair. There were various carters and mule-drivers assembled
round the broken waggon, and at last some man of an original turn
of mind, proposed that a general and joint effort should be made to
get things to-rights again, and clear the way - an idea which I
verily believe would never have presented itself to our friend,
though we had remained there until now. It was done at no great
cost of labour; but at every pause in the doing, his hands were
wound in his hair again, as if there were no ray of hope to lighten
his misery. The moment he was on his box once more, and clattering
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briskly down hill, he returned to the Sonnambula and the peasant
girls, as if it were not in the power of misfortune to depress him.
Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages on this
beautiful road, disappears when they are entered, for many of them
are very miserable. The streets are narrow, dark, and dirty; the
inhabitants lean and squalid; and the withered old women, with
their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the head,
like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely ugly, both along the
Riviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen straggling about in dim
door-ways with their spindles, or crooning together in by-corners,
they are like a population of Witches - except that they certainly
are not to be suspected of brooms or any other instrument of
cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold
wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by any means
ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated pigs,
with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their
own tails.
These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however: nestling,
with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on steep hillsides,
or built upon the brink of noble bays: are charming. The
vegetation is, everywhere, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palmtree
makes a novel feature in the novel scenery. In one town, San
Remo - a most extraordinary place, built on gloomy open arches, so
that one might ramble underneath the whole town - there are pretty
terrace gardens; in other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights'
hammers, and the building of small vessels on the beach. In some
of the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor. In
every case, each little group of houses presents, in the distance,
some enchanting confusion of picturesque and fanciful shapes.
The road itself - now high above the glittering sea, which breaks
against the foot of the precipice: now turning inland to sweep the
shore of a bay: now crossing the stony bed of a mountain stream:
now low down on the beach: now winding among riven rocks of many
forms and colours: now chequered by a solitary ruined tower, one
of a chain of towers built, in old time, to protect the coast from
the invasions of the Barbary Corsairs - presents new beauties every
moment. When its own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on
through a long line of suburb, lying on the flat seashore, to
Genoa, then, the changing glimpses of that noble city and its
harbour, awaken a new source of interest; freshened by every huge,
unwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its outskirts: and coming to
its climax when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with its
beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the
view.
CHAPTER V - TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA
I STROLLED away from Genoa on the 6th of November, bound for a good
many places (England among them), but first for Piacenza; for which
town I started in the COUPE of a machine something like a
travelling caravan, in company with the brave Courier, and a lady
with a large dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night.
It was very wet, and very cold; very dark, and very dismal; we
travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and stopped
nowhere for refreshment. At ten o'clock next morning, we changed
coaches at Alessandria, where we were packed up in another coach
(the body whereof would have been small for a fly), in company with
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a very old priest; a young Jesuit, his companion - who carried
their breviaries and other books, and who, in the exertion of
getting into the coach, had made a gash of pink leg between his
black stocking and his black knee-shorts, that reminded one of
Hamlet in Ophelia's closet, only it was visible on both legs - a
provincial Avvocato; and a gentleman with a red nose that had an
uncommon and singular sheen upon it, which I never observed in the
human subject before. In this way we travelled on, until four
o'clock in the afternoon; the roads being still very heavy, and the
coach very slow. To mend the matter, the old priest was troubled
with cramps in his legs, so that he had to give a terrible yell
every ten minutes or so, and be hoisted out by the united efforts
of the company; the coach always stopping for him, with great
gravity. This disorder, and the roads, formed the main subject of
conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that the COUPE had
discharged two people, and had only one passenger inside - a
monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, of which no
man could see the ends when he had his hat on - I took advantage of
its better accommodation, and in company with this gentleman (who
was very conversational and good-humoured) travelled on, until
nearly eleven o'clock at night, when the driver reported that he
couldn't think of going any farther, and we accordingly made a halt
at a place called Stradella.
The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard where
our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls, and firewood,
were all heaped up together, higgledy-piggledy; so that you didn't
know, and couldn't have taken your oath, which was a fowl and which
was a cart. We followed a sleepy man with a flaring torch, into a
great, cold room, where there were two immensely broad beds, on
what looked like two immensely broad deal dining-table
s; another
deal table of similar dimensions in the middle of the bare floor;
four windows; and two chairs. Somebody said it was my room; and I
walked up and down it, for half an hour or so, staring at the
Tuscan, the old priest, the young priest, and the Avvocato (Red-
Nose lived in the town, and had gone home), who sat upon their
beds, and stared at me in return.
The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the proceedings, is
interrupted by an announcement from the Brave (he had been cooking)
that supper is ready; and to the priest's chamber (the next room
and the counterpart of mine) we all adjourn. The first dish is a
cabbage, boiled with a great quantity of rice in a tureen full of
water, and flavoured with cheese. It is so hot, and we are so
cold, that it appears almost jolly. The second dish is some little
bits of pork, fried with pigs' kidneys. The third, two red fowls.
The fourth, two little red turkeys. The fifth, a huge stew of
garlic and truffles, and I don't know what else; and this concludes
the entertainment.
Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of the
dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, in the
middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like Birnam Wood
taking a winter walk. He kindles this heap in a twinkling, and
produces a jorum of hot brandy and water; for that bottle of his
keeps company with the seasons, and now holds nothing but the
purest EAU DE VIE. When he has accomplished this feat, he retires
for the night; and I hear him, for an hour afterwards, and indeed
until I fall asleep, making jokes in some outhouse (apparently
under the pillow), where he is smoking cigars with a party of
confidential friends. He never was in the house in his life
before; but he knows everybody everywhere, before he has been
anywhere five minutes; and is certain to have attracted to himself,
in the meantime, the enthusiastic devotion of the whole
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establishment.
This is at twelve o'clock at night. At four o'clock next morning,
he is up again, fresher than a full-blown rose; making blazing
fires without the least authority from the landlord; producing mugs
of scalding coffee when nobody else can get anything but cold
water; and going out into the dark streets, and roaring for fresh