There had
been grand doings of some sort, and, though the doings were over,
the moral and material debris were not yet quite removed. The
famiglia Bonvicino was gone, and so was Cricco. The cook, the new
waiter, and the landlord (who sings a good comic song upon
occasion) had all drunk as much wine as they could carry; and later
on I found Veneranda, the one-eyed old chambermaid, lying upon my
bed fast asleep. I afterwards heard that, in spite of the autumnal
weather, the landlord spent his night on the grass under the
chestnuts, while the cook was found at four o'clock in the morning
lying at full length upon a table under the veranda. Next day,
however, all had become normal again.
Among our fellow-guests during this visit was a fiery-faced
eructive butcher from Turin. A difference of opinion having arisen
between him and his wife, I told the Signora that I would rather be
wrong with her than right with her husband. The lady was
delighted.
"Do you hear that, my dear?" said she. "He says he had rather be
wrong with me than right with you. Isn't he a naughty man?"
She said that if she died her husband was going to marry a girl of
fifteen. I said: "And if your husband dies, ma'am, send me a
dispatch to London, and I will come and marry you myself." They
were both delighted at this.
She told us the thunder had upset her and frightened her.
"Has it given you a headache?"
She replied: No; but it had upset her stomach. No doubt the
thunder had shaken her stomach's confidence in the soundness of its
opinions, so as to weaken its proselytising power. By and by,
seeing that she ate a pretty good dinner, I inquired:
"Is your stomach better now, ma'am?"
And she said it was. Next day my stomach was bad too.
I told her I had been married, but had lost my wife and had
determined never to marry again till I could find a widow whom I
had admired as a married woman.
Giovanni, the new waiter, explained to me that the butcher was not
really bad or cruel at all. I shook my head at him and said I
wished I could think so, but that his poor wife looked very ill and
unhappy.
The housemaid's name was La Rosa Mistica.
The landlord was a favourite with all the guests. Every one patted
him on the cheeks or the head, or chucked him under the chin, or
did something nice and friendly at him. He was a little man with a
face like a russet pippin apple, about sixty-five years old, but
made of iron. He was going to marry a third wife, and six young
women had already come up from S. Ambrogio to be looked at. I saw
one of them. She was a Visigoth-looking sort of person and wore a
large wobbly-brimmed straw hat; she was about forty, and gave me
the impression of being familiar with labour of all kinds. He
pressed me to give my opinion of her, but I sneaked out of it by
declaring that I must see a good deal more of the lady than I was
ever likely to see before I could form an opinion at all.
On coming down from the sanctuary one afternoon I heard the
landlord's comic song, of which I have spoken above. It was about
the musical instruments in a band: the trumpet did this, the
clarinet did that, the flute went tootle, tootle, tootle, and there
was an appropriate motion of the hand for every instrument. I was
a little disappointed with it, but the landlord said I was too
serious and the only thing that would cure me was to learn the song
myself. He said the butcher had learned it already, so it was not
hard, which indeed it was not. It was about as hard as:
The battle of the Nile
I was there all the while
At the battle of the Nile.
I had to learn it and sing it (Heaven help me, for I have no more
voice than a mouse!), and the landlord said that the motion of my
little finger was very promising.
The chestnuts are never better than after harvest, when they are
heavy-laden with their pale green hedgehog-like fruit and alive
with people swarming among their branches, pruning them while the
leaves are still good winter food for cattle. Why, I wonder, is
there such an especial charm about the pruning of trees? Who does
not feel it? No matter what the tree is, the poplar of France, or
the brookside willow or oak coppice of England, or the chestnuts or
mulberries of Italy, all are interesting when being pruned, or when
pruned just lately. A friend once consulted me casually about a
picture on which he was at work, and complained that a row of trees
in it was without sufficient interest. I was fortunate enough to
be able to help him by saying: "Prune them freely and put a
magpie's nest in one of them," and the trees became interesting at
once. People in trees always look well, or rather, I should say,
trees always look well with people in them, or indeed with any
living thing in them, especially when it is of a kind that is not
commonly seen in them; and the measured lop of the bill-hook and,
by and by, the click as a bough breaks and the lazy crash as it
falls over on to the ground, are as pleasing to the ear as is the
bough-bestrewn herbage to the eye.
To what height and to what slender boughs do not these hardy
climbers trust themselves.
