The
Brave Courier Comes, And Gives You Admittance.
You walk into a
seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard
opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a
cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a
vaulted roof and whitewashed walls:
Not unlike a great Methodist
chapel. This is the sala. It has five windows and five doors, and
is decorated with pictures which would gladden the heart of one of
those picture-cleaners in London who hang up, as a sign, a picture
divided, like death and the lady, at the top of the old ballad:
which always leaves you in a state of uncertainty whether the
ingenious professor has cleaned one half, or dirtied the other.
The furniture of this sala is a sort of red brocade. All the
chairs are immovable, and the sofa weighs several tons.
On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are
dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bedrooms: each with a
multiplicity of doors and windows. Up-stairs are divers other
gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and down-stairs is another kitchen,
which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for burning charcoal,
looks like an alchemical laboratory. There are also some half-
dozen small sitting-rooms, where the servants in this hot July, may
escape from the heat of the fire, and where the brave Courier plays
all sorts of musical instruments of his own manufacture, all the
evening long. A mighty old, wandering, ghostly, echoing, grim,
bare house it is, as ever I beheld or thought of.
There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the drawing-
room; and under this terrace, and forming one side of the little
garden, is what used to be the stable. It is now a cow-house, and
has three cows in it, so that we get new milk by the bucketful.
There is no pasturage near, and they never go out, but are
constantly lying down, and surfeiting themselves with vine-leaves--
perfect Italian cows enjoying the dolce far' niente all day long.
They are presided over, and slept with, by an old man named
Antonio, and his son; two burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and
feet, who wear, each, a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a red sash,
with a relic, or some sacred charm like the bonbon off a twelfth-
cake, hanging round the neck. The old man is very anxious to
convert me to the Catholic faith, and exhorts me frequently. We
sit upon a stone by the door, sometimes in the evening, like
Robinson Crusoe and Friday reversed; and he generally relates,
towards my conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint Peter-
-chiefly, I believe, from the unspeakable delight he has in his
imitation of the cock.
The view, as I have said, is charming; but in the day you must keep
the lattice-blinds close shut, or the sun would drive you mad; and
when the sun goes down you must shut up all the windows, or the
mosquitoes would tempt you to commit suicide. So at this time of
the year, you don't see much of the prospect within doors. As for
the flies, you don't mind them. Nor the fleas, whose size is
prodigious, and whose name is Legion, and who populate the coach-
house to that extent that I daily expect to see the carriage going
off bodily, drawn by myriads of industrious fleas in harness. The
rats are kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats, who
roam about the garden for that purpose. The lizards, of course,
nobody cares for; they play in the sun, and don't bite. The little
scorpions are merely curious. The beetles are rather late, and
have not appeared yet. The frogs are company. There is a preserve
of them in the grounds of the next villa; and after nightfall, one
would think that scores upon scores of women in pattens were going
up and down a wet stone pavement without a moment's cessation.
That is exactly the noise they make.
The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful sea-shore, was
dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John the Baptist. I believe
there is a legend that Saint John's bones were received there, with
various solemnities, when they were first brought to Genoa; for
Genoa possesses them to this day. When there is any uncommon
tempest at sea, they are brought out and exhibited to the raging
weather, which they never fail to calm. In consequence of this
connection of Saint John with the city, great numbers of the common
people are christened Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is
pronounced in the Genoese patois 'Batcheetcha,' like a sneeze. To
hear everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, on a Sunday, or
festa-day, when there are crowds in the streets, is not a little
singular and amusing to a stranger.
The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose walls
(outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all sorts of
subjects, grim and holy. But time and the sea-air have nearly
obliterated them; and they look like the entrance to Vauxhall
Gardens on a sunny day. The court-yards of these houses are
overgrown with grass and weeds; all sorts of hideous patches cover
the bases of the statues, as if they were afflicted with a
cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty; and the iron bars
outside the lower windows are all tumbling down. Firewood is kept
in halls where costly treasures might be heaped up, mountains high;
waterfalls are dry and choked; fountains, too dull to play, and too
lazy to work, have just enough recollection of their identity, in
their sleep, to make the neighbourhood damp; and the sirocco wind
is often blowing over all these things for days together, like a
gigantic oven out for a holiday.
Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the VIRGIN'S
MOTHER, when the young men of the neighbourhood, having worn green
wreaths of the vine in some procession or other, bathed in them, by
scores.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 11 of 72
Words from 10260 to 11292
of 73541
