Pictures From Italy

by Dickens, Chales

  milk, on the chance of somebody with a cow getting up to supply it.

  While the horses are 'coming,' I stumble out into the town too. It

  seems to be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in

  and out of the arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it

  is profoundly dark, and raining heavily; and I shouldn't know it

  to-morrow, if I were taken there to try. Which Heaven forbid.

  The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, the driver

  swears; sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan oaths.

  Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he begins with

  Christianity and merges into Paganism. Various messengers are

  despatched; not so much after the horses, as after each other; for

  the first messenger never comes back, and all the rest imitate him.

  At length the horses appear, surrounded by all the messengers; some

  kicking them, and some dragging them, and all shouting abuse to

  them. Then, the old priest, the young priest, the Avvocato, the

  Tuscan, and all of us, take our places; and sleepy voices

  proceeding from the doors of extraordinary hutches in divers parts

  of the yard, cry out 'Addio corriere mio! Buon' viaggio,

  corriere!' Salutations which the courier, with his face one

  monstrous grin, returns in like manner as we go jolting and

  wallowing away, through the mud.

  At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey from the inn at

  Stradella, we broke up our little company before the hotel door,

  with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all sides. The

  old priest was taken with the cramp again, before he had got halfway

  down the street; and the young priest laid the bundle of books

  on a door-step, while he dutifully rubbed the old gentleman's legs.

  The client of the Avvocato was waiting for him at the yard-gate,

  and kissed him on each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I

  am afraid he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished

  purse. The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering off,

  carrying his hat in his hand that he might the better trail up the

  ends of his dishevelled moustache. And the brave Courier, as he

  and I strolled away to look about us, began immediately to

  entertain me with the private histories and family affairs of the

  whole party.

  A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is. A deserted, solitary,

  grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts; half filled-up trenches,

  which afford a frowsy pasturage to the lean kine that wander about

  them; and streets of stern houses, moodily frowning at the other

  houses over the way. The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go

  wandering about, with the double curse of laziness and poverty,

  uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimentals; the dirtiest of

  children play with their impromptu toys (pigs and mud) in the

  feeblest of gutters; and the gauntest of dogs trot in and out of

  the dullest of archways, in perpetual search of something to eat,

  which they never seem to find. A mysterious and solemn Palace,

  guarded by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands

  gravely in the midst of the idle town; and the king with the marble

  legs, who flourished in the time of the thousand and one Nights,

  might live contentedly inside of it, and never have the energy, in

  his upper half of flesh and blood, to want to come out.

  What a strange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious doze it is, to

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  ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the sun!

  Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all the mouldy, dreary, Godforgotten

  towns in the wide world, the chief. Sitting on this

  hillock where a bastion used to be, and where a noisy fortress was,

  in the time of the old Roman station here, I became aware that I

  have never known till now, what it is to be lazy. A dormouse must

  surely be in very much the same condition before he retires under

  the wool in his cage; or a tortoise before he buries himself.

  I feel that I am getting rusty. That any attempt to think, would

  be accompanied with a creaking noise. That there is nothing,

  anywhere, to be done, or needing to be done. That there is no more

  human progress, motion, effort, or advancement, of any kind beyond

  this. That the whole scheme stopped here centuries ago, and laid

  down to rest until the Day of Judgment.

  Never while the brave Courier lives! Behold him jingling out of

  Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest posting-chaise

  ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window as if he were

  peeping over a garden wall; while the postilion, concentrated

  essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his

  animated conversation, to touch his hat to a blunt-nosed little

  Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, enshrined in a plaster

  Punch's show outside the town.

  In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trellis-work,

  supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in themselves, are

  anything but picturesque. But, here, they twine them around trees,

  and let them trail among the hedges; and the vineyards are full of

  trees, regularly planted for this purpose, each with its own vine

  twining and clustering about it. Their leaves are now of the

  brightest gold and deepest red; and never was anything so

  enchantingly graceful and full of beauty. Through miles of these

  delightful forms and colours, the road winds its way. The wild

  festoons, the elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all

  shapes; the fairy nets flung over great trees, and making them

  prisoners in sport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite

  shapes upon the ground; how rich and beautiful they are! And every

  now and then, a long, long line of trees, will be all bound and

  garlanded together: as if they had taken hold of one another, and

  were coming dancing down the field!

  Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town; and

  consequently is not so characteristic as many places of less note.

  Always excepting the retired Piazza, where the Cathedral,

  Baptistery, and Campanile - ancient buildings, of a sombre brown,

  embellished with innumerable grotesque monsters and dreamy-looking

  creatures carved in marble and red stone - are clustered in a noble

  and magnificent repose. Their silent presence was only invaded,

  when I saw them, by the twittering of the many birds that were

  flying in and out of the crevices in the stones and little nooks in

  the architecture, where they had made their nests. They were busy,

  rising from the cold shade of Temples made with hands, into the

  sunny air of Heaven. Not so the worshippers within, who were

  listening to the same drowsy chaunt, or kneeling before the same

  kinds of images and tapers, or whispering, with their heads bowed

  down, in the selfsame dark confessionals, as I had left in Genoa

  and everywhere else.

  The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church is

  covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and depressing

  influenc
e. It is miserable to see great works of art - something

  of the Souls of Painters - perishing and fading away, like human

  forms. This cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Correggio's

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  frescoes in the Cupola. Heaven knows how beautiful they may have

  been at one time. Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now;

  but such a labyrinth of arms and legs: such heaps of foreshortened

  limbs, entangled and involved and jumbled together: no

  operative surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wildest delirium.

  There is a very interesting subterranean church here: the roof

  supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there seemed to

  be at least one beggar in ambush: to say nothing of the tombs and

  secluded altars. From every one of these lurking-places, such

  crowds of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men and

  women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic

  gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, came

  hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in the cathedral

  above, had been suddenly animated, and had retired to this lower

  church, they could hardly have made a greater confusion, or

  exhibited a more confounding display of arms and legs.

  There is Petrarch's Monument, too; and there is the Baptistery,

  with its beautiful arches and immense font; and there is a gallery

  containing some very remarkable pictures, whereof a few were being

  copied by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet caps more off

  their heads than on. There is the Farnese Palace, too; and in it

  one of the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen - a

  grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering away.

  It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape; the lower

  seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but above them, great heavy

  chambers; rather than boxes, where the Nobles sat, remote in their

  proud state. Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre,

  enhanced in the spectator's fancy by its gay intention and design,

  none but worms can be familiar with. A hundred and ten years have

  passed, since any play was acted here. The sky shines in through

  the gashes in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away,

  and only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear the faded colours,

  and make spectral maps upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down

  where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has

  rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it

  would sink beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy

  depth beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all

  the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste;

  any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are

  muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have

  changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time will

  seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act

  them on this ghostly stage.

  It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where the

  darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting the

  main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable by

  the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all the glory

  of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was performing,

  feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in all directions

  before all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning

  the usual chant, in the usual, low, dull, drawling, melancholy

  tone.

  Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant town, this

  same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the centre

  of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another door,

  and was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the shrillest

  trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately, came tearing round the

  corner, an equestrian company from Paris: marshalling themselves

  under the walls of the church, and flouting, with their horses'

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  heels, the griffins, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and

  marble, decorating its exterior. First, there came a stately

  nobleman with a great deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous

  banner, on which was inscribed, MAZEPPA! TO-NIGHT! Then, a

  Mexican chief, with a great pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like

  Hercules. Then, six or eight Roman chariots: each with a

  beautiful lady in extremely short petticoats, and unnaturally pink

  tights, erect within: shedding beaming looks upon the crowd, in

  which there was a latent expression of discomposure and anxiety,

  for which I couldn't account, until, as the open back of each

  chariot presented itself, I saw the immense difficulty with which

  the pink legs maintained their perpendicular, over the uneven

  pavement of the town: which gave me quite a new idea of the

  ancient Romans and Britons. The procession was brought to a close,

  by some dozen indomitable warriors of different nations, riding two

  and two, and haughtily surveying the tame population of Modena:

  among whom, however, they occasionally condescended to scatter

  largesse in the form of a few handbills. After caracolling among

  the lions and tigers, and proclaiming that evening's entertainments

  with blast of trumpet, it then filed off, by the other end of the

  square, and left a new and greatly increased dulness behind.

  When the procession had so entirely passed away, that the shrill

  trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the last horse

  was hopelessly round the corner, the people who had come out of the

  church to stare at it, went back again. But one old lady, kneeling

  on the pavement within, near the door, had seen it all, and had

  been immensely interested, without getting up; and this old lady's

  eye, at that juncture, I happened to catch: to our mutual

  confusion. She cut our embarrassment very short, however, by

  crossing herself devoutly, and going down, at full length, on her

  face, before a figure in a fancy petticoat and a gilt crown; which

  was so like one of the procession-figures, that perhaps at this

  hour she may think the whole appearance a celestial vision.

  Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven her her interest in the

  Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor.

  There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder, in

  the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to see

  the bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of Modena took

  away from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth century, and

  about which there was war made and a mock-heroic poem by TASSONE,

  too. Being quite content, however, to look at the outside of the

  tower, and feast, in imagination, on the bucket within; and

  preferring to loiter in the shade of the tall Campanile, and about

  the cathedral; I have no personal knowledge of this bucket, even at

  the present time.

  Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man (or the

/>   Guide-Book) would have considered that we had half done justice to

  the wonders of Modena. But it is such a delight to me to leave new

  scenes behind, and still go on, encountering newer scenes - and,

  moreover, I have such a perverse disposition in respect of sights

  that are cut, and dried, and dictated - that I fear I sin against

  similar authorities in every place I visit.

  Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna, I found

  myself walking next Sunday morning, among the stately marble tombs

  and colonnades, in company with a crowd of Peasants, and escorted

  by a little Cicerone of that town, who was excessively anxious for

  the honour of the place, and most solicitous to divert my attention

  from the bad monuments: whereas he was never tired of extolling

  the good ones. Seeing this little man (a good-humoured little man

  he was, who seemed to have nothing in his face but shining teeth

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  and eyes) looking wistfully at a certain plot of grass, I asked him

  who was buried there. 'The poor people, Signore,' he said, with a

  shrug and a smile, and stopping to look back at me - for he always

  went on a little before, and took off his hat to introduce every

  new monument. 'Only the poor, Signore! It's very cheerful. It's

  very lively. How green it is, how cool! It's like a meadow!

  There are five,' - holding up all the fingers of his right hand to

  express the number, which an Italian peasant will always do, if it

  be within the compass of his ten fingers, - 'there are five of my

  little children buried there, Signore; just there; a little to the

  right. Well! Thanks to God! It's very cheerful. How green it

  is, how cool it is! It's quite a meadow!'

  He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was sorry for him,

  took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone takes snuff), and made a

  little bow; partly in deprecation of his having alluded to such a

  subject, and partly in memory of the children and of his favourite

  saint. It was as unaffected and as perfectly natural a little bow,

  as ever man made. Immediately afterwards, he took his hat off

  altogether, and begged to introduce me to the next monument; and

  his eyes and his teeth shone brighter than before.

  CHAPTER VI - THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA

  THERE was such a very smart official in attendance at the Cemetery