There Is A Flaring Country Lamp On
The Table; And, Hovering About It, Scratching Her Thick Black Hair
Continually, A Yellow Dwarf Of A Woman, Who Stands On Tiptoe To
Arrange The Hatchet Knives, And Takes A Flying Leap To Look Into
The Water-Jug.
The beds in the adjoining rooms are of the
liveliest kind.
There is not a solitary scrap of looking-glass in
the house, and the washing apparatus is identical with the cooking
utensils. But the yellow dwarf sets on the table a good flask of
excellent wine, holding a quart at least; and produces, among half-
a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds of a roasted kid, smoking hot.
She is as good-humoured, too, as dirty, which is saying a great
deal. So here's long life to her, in the flask of wine, and
prosperity to the establishment.
Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who are now
repairing to their own homes again--each with his scallop shell and
staff, and soliciting alms for the love of God--we come, by a fair
country, to the Falls of Terni, where the whole Velino river
dashes, headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray and
rainbows. Perugia, strongly fortified by art and nature, on a
lofty eminence, rising abruptly from the plain where purple
mountains mingle with the distant sky, is glowing, on its market-
day, with radiant colours. They set off its sombre but rich Gothic
buildings admirably. The pavement of its market-place is strewn
with country goods. All along the steep hill leading from the
town, under the town wall, there is a noisy fair of calves, lambs,
pigs, horses, mules, and oxen. Fowls, geese, and turkeys, flutter
vigorously among their very hoofs; and buyers, sellers, and
spectators, clustering everywhere, block up the road as we come
shouting down upon them.
Suddenly, there is a ringing sound among our horses. The driver
stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and casting up his eyes to
Heaven, he delivers this apostrophe, 'Oh Jove Omnipotent! here is a
horse has lost his shoe!'
Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, and the
utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any one but an
Italian Vetturino) with which it is announced, it is not long in
being repaired by a mortal Farrier, by whose assistance we reach
Castiglione the same night, and Arezzo next day. Mass is, of
course, performing in its fine cathedral, where the sun shines in
among the clustered pillars, through rich stained-glass windows:
half revealing, half concealing the kneeling figures on the
pavement, and striking out paths of spotted light in the long
aisles.
But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a fair clear
morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on Florence! See
where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, bright with the
winding Arno, and shut in by swelling hills; its domes, and towers,
and palaces, rising from the rich country in a glittering heap, and
shining in the sun like gold!
Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beautiful
Florence; and the strong old piles of building make such heaps of
shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another and a
different city of rich forms and fancies, always lying at our feet.
Prodigious palaces, constructed for defence, with small distrustful
windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness formed of huge
masses of rough stone, frown, in their old sulky state, on every
street. In the midst of the city--in the Piazza of the Grand Duke,
adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune--rises
the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and
the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In its court-
yard--worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom--is a
massive staircase that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of
horses might be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon, faded and
tarnished in its stately decorations, and mouldering by grains, but
recording yet, in pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici
and the wars of the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by,
in an adjacent court-yard of the building--a foul and dismal place,
where some men are shut up close, in small cells like ovens; and
where others look through bars and beg; where some are playing
draughts, and some are talking to their friends, who smoke, the
while, to purify the air; and some are buying wine and fruit of
women-vendors; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile to look at.
'They are merry enough, Signore,' says the jailer. 'They are all
blood-stained here,' he adds, indicating, with his hand, three-
fourths of the whole building. Before the hour is out, an old man,
eighty years of age, quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl
of seventeen, stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright
flowers; and is brought in prisoner, to swell the number.
Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte Vecchio--
that bridge which is covered with the shops of Jewellers and
Goldsmiths--is a most enchanting feature in the scene. The space
of one house, in the centre, being left open, the view beyond is
shown as in a frame; and that precious glimpse of sky, and water,
and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and
gables on the bridge, is exquisite. Above it, the Gallery of the
Grand Duke crosses the river. It was built to connect the two
Great Palaces by a secret passage; and it takes its jealous course
among the streets and houses, with true despotism: going where it
lists, and spurning every obstacle away, before it.
The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the streets,
in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Compagnia della
Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks of men.
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