Our Driver Decided For Us To Go First To The Villa Falconieri, Which Had
Lately Been Bought And Presented By A Fond Subject To The German
Emperor, And By Him In Turn Bestowed On The German Academy At Rome.
In
the cold, clean, stony streets of Frascati, as we rattled through them,
there breathed the odor of the
Great local industry; and the doorways of
many buildings, widening almost in a circle to admit the burly tuns of
wine, testified how generally, how almost universally, the vintage of
that measureless acreage of grapes around the place employed the
inhabitants. But there was little else to impress the observer in
Frascati, and we willingly passed out of the town in the road climbing
the long incline to the Villa Fal-conieri, with its glimpses, far and
near, of woods and gardens. It was a road so much to our minds that
nothing was further from us than the notion that our horse might not
like it so well; but, at the first distinct rise, he stopped and wheeled
round so abruptly, after first pawing the air, that there could be no
doubt where the popular interest we had lately enjoyed in Frascati had
really originated. Probably our horse's distinguishing trait was known
to everybody in Frascati except his driver. He, at least, showed the
greatest surprise at the horse's behavior, as unprecedented in their
acquaintance, which he owned was brief, for he had bought him in Rome
only the week before. With successive retreats to level ground he put
him again and again at the incline, but as soon as the horse felt the
ground rising under his feet he lifted them from it and whirled round
for another retreat. All this we witnessed from an advantageotis point
at the roadside which we had taken up at his first show of reluctance;
and at last the driver suggested that we should leave it and go on to
the Villa Falconieri on foot. On our part, we suggested that he should
attempt some other villa which would not involve an objectionable climb.
He then proposed the Villa Mandragone, and the horse seemed to agree
with us. As we drove again through the clean, cold, stony streets, with
the rounded doorways for the wine-casks, we fancied something clearly
ironical in the general interest renewed by our return. But we tried to
look as if we had merely done the Villa Falconieri with unexampled
rapidity, and pushed on to the Villa Mandragone, where, under the roof
of interlacing ilex toughs, our horse ought to have been tempted on in a
luxurious unconsciousness of anything like an incline. But he was
apparently an animal which would have felt the difference between two
rose-leaves and one in a flowery path, and just when we were thinking
what a delightful time we were having, and beginning to feel a gentle
question as to who the pathetic little cripple halting toward us with a
color-box and a camp-stool might be, and whether she painted as well as
a kind heart could wish, our horse stopped with the suddenness which we
knew to be definite. The sensitive creature could not be deceived; he
must have reached rising ground, and we sided with him against our
driver, who would have pretended it was fancy.
It was now noon, and we drove back to the _piazza,_ agreeing upon a less
price in view of the imperfect service rendered, and deciding to collect
our thoughts for a new venture over such luncheon as the best hotel
could give us. It was not so good a hotel as the lunch it gave. It was
beyond the cleansing tide of modernity which has swept the Roman hotels,
and was dirty everywhere, but with a specially dirty, large, shabby
dining-room, cold and draughty, yet precious for the large, round
brazier near our table which kept one side of us warm in romantic
mediaeval fashion, and invited us to rise from time to time and thaw our
fingers over its blinking coals. The bath in which our chicken had been
boiled formed a good soup; there was an admirable _pasta_ and a
creditable, if imperfect, conception of beefsteak; and there was a
caraffe of new Frascati wine, sweet, like new cider. If we could have
asked more, it would not have been more than the young Italian officer
who sat in the other corner with his pretty young wife, and who allowed
me to weave a whole realtistic fiction out of their being at Frascati so
out of season.
Just as I was most satisfyingly accounting for them, our late driver
alarmed me by appearing at the door and beckoning me to the outside. The
occasion was nothing worse than the presence of a man who, he said, was
his brother, with a horse which, upon the same authority, was without
moral blame or physical blemish. If anything, it preferred a mountain to
a plain country, and could be warranted to balk at nothing. The man, who
was almost as exemplary as the horse, would assume the unfulfilled
contract of the other man and horse with a slight increase of pay; and
yet I had my doubts. The day had clouded, and I meekly contended that it
was going to rain; but the man explicitly and the horse tacitly scoffed
at the notion, and I yielded. I shall always be glad that I did so, for
in the keeping of those good creatures the rest of our day was an
unalloyed delight. It appeared, upon further acquaintance, that the man
paid a hundred dollars for the horse; his brother had paid a hundred and
twenty-five for the balker; but it was the belief of our driver that it
would be worth the difference when it had reconciled itself to the
rising ground of Frascati; as yet it was truly a stranger there. His own
horse was used to ups and downs everywhere; they had just come from a
long trip, and he was going to drive to Siena and back the next week
with two ladies for passengers, who were to pay him five dollars a day
for himself and horse and their joint keep.
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