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 fellow, 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
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
doorways 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 hill-
sides, or built upon the brink of noble bays: are charming. The
vegetation is, everywhere, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm-
tree 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:
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