Of course, we stopped at a palace turned hotel, drove into a court with double flights of high stone and marble stairways, and were hurried up to the marble-mosaic landing by an active boy, and, almost before we could ask for rooms, were shown into a suite of magnificent apartments.I had a glimpse of a garden in the rear,--flowers and plants, and a balcony up which I suppose Romeo climbed to hold that immortal love-prattle with the lovesick Juliet.Boy began to light the candles.Asked in English the price of such fine rooms.Reply in Italian.Asked in German.Reply in Italian.Asked in French, with the same result.Other servants appeared, each with a piece of baggage.Other candles were lighted.Everybody talked in chorus.
The landlady--a woman of elegant manners and great command of her native tongue--appeared with a candle, and joined in the melodious confusion.What is the price of these rooms? More jabber, more servants bearing lights.We seemed suddenly to have come into an illumination and a private lunatic asylum.The landlady and her troop grew more and more voluble and excited.Ah, then, if these rooms do not suit the signor and signoras, there are others; and we were whisked off to apartments yet grander, great suites with high, canopied beds, mirrors, and furniture that was luxurious a hundred years ago.The price? Again a torrent of Italian; servants pouring in, lights flashing, our baggage arriving, until, in the tumult, hopeless of any response to our inquiry for a servant who could speak anything but Italian, and when we had decided, in despair, to hire the entire establishment, a waiter appeared who was accomplished in all languages, the row subsided, and we were left alone in our glory, and soon in welcome sleep forgot our desperate search for a warm climate.
The next day it was rainy and not warm; but the sun came out occasionally, and we drove about to see some of the sights.The first Italian town which the stranger sees he is sure to remember, the outdoor life of the people is so different from that at the North.It is the fiction in Italy that it is always summer; and the people sit in the open market-place, shiver in the open doorways, crowd into corners where the sun comes, and try to keep up the beautiful pretense.The picturesque groups of idlers and traffickers were more interesting to us than the palaces with sculptured fronts and old Roman busts, or tombs of the Scaligers, and old gates.
Perhaps I ought to except the wonderful and perfect Roman amphitheater, over every foot of which a handsome boy in rags followed us, looking over every wall that we looked over, peering into every hole that we peered into, thus showing his fellowship with us, and at every pause planting himself before us, and throwing a somerset, and then extending his greasy cap for coppers, as if he knew that the modern mind ought not to dwell too exclusively on hoary antiquity without some relief.
Anxious, as I have said, to find the sunny South, we left Verona that afternoon for Florence, by way of Padua and Bologna.The ride to Padua was through a plain, at this season dreary enough, were it not, here and there, for the abrupt little hills and the snowy Alps, which were always in sight, and towards sundown and between showers transcendently lovely in a purple and rosy light.But nothing now could be more desolate than the rows of unending mulberry-trees, pruned down to the stumps, through which we rode all the afternoon.
I suppose they look better when the branches grow out with the tender leaves for the silk-worms, and when they are clothed with grapevines.
Padua was only to us a name.There we turned south, lost mountains and the near hills, and had nothing but the mulberry flats and ditches of water, and chilly rain and mist.It grew unpleasant as we went south.At dark we were riding slowly, very slowly, for miles through a country overflowed with water, out of which trees and houses loomed up in a ghastly show.At all the stations soldiers were getting on board, shouting and singing discordantly choruses from the operas; for there was a rising at Padua, and one feared at Bologna the populace getting up insurrections against the enforcement of the grist-tax,--a tax which has made the government very unpopular, as it falls principally upon the poor.
Creeping along at such a slow rate, we reached Bologna too late for the Florence train, It was eight o'clock, and still raining.The next train went at two o'clock in the morning, and was the best one for us to take.We had supper in an inn near by, and a fair attempt at a fire in our parlor.I sat before it, and kept it as lively as possible, as the hours wore away, and tried to make believe that Iwas ruminating on the ancient greatness of Bologna and its famous university, some of whose chairs had been occupied by women, and upon the fact that it was on a little island in the Reno, just below here, that Octavius and Lepidus and Mark Antony formed the second Triumvirate, which put an end to what little liberty Rome had left;but in reality I was thinking of the draught on my back, and the comforts of a sunny clime.But the time came at length for starting;and in luxurious cars we finished the night very comfortably, and rode into Florence at eight in the morning to find, as we had hoped, on the other side of the Apennines, a sunny sky and balmy air.