Birbone III.
Basseggio.
| "Unde habeas quærit nemo, sed oportet habere." "Fidarsi e bene, ma non fidarsi e meglio."—Italian Proverb. |
Near a fountain in one of the main streets of the west end of Rome, in which a recumbent figure bends over his ever-gushing urn; his body half hid from sight, and slowly dissolving in the water, under protection of a dimly lit shrine of a gaily painted Madonna; a tarnished brass plate with the word B—— engraved thereon, is inserted into the panels of a dingy-looking door, out of which a long piece of dirty string dangles through a hole. If you touch the electric cord, the shock is instantly transmitted to the other end, and the importunate tinkling of a well-hung bell is responded to by a clicking of the latch, when an invisible arm pulls back the door, and your entrance is secured into a passage encumbered with broken busts and bas-reliefs, tier above tier, and a series of marble tablets, with Dis manibus inscriptions, let into the wall on either side. If, now, you pick your way amid the many stumbling-blocks that beset it, till you have reached the stair, (a narrow stair and dark, and encumbered like the passage, with numerous relics of antiquity,) a female voice, loudly shrilling from above, demands your business—"Chi c'e?"—you answer of course "Amico," and are bid to mount accordingly. Arrived at the summit of the stair, that same voice, the high-pitched key of which startled you from below, sounds less disagreeable, now that you are close beside the fair proprietress of it, who at once greets you affably, begs you to be seated, has seated herself beside you, and, premising that her "marito" will appear anon, has begun to ask you a hundred questions, some of which you are relieved from answering by the actual advent of Signor B——, who makes his politest bow, while Madame introduces you as an old acquaintance. You see at a glance this part of Signor B——'s history, that he has bought a young and pretty wife out of many years' traffic in antiquities. Whatever else he may at any other time have purchased, was with intention to dispose of afterwards, a suitable opportunity offering. But this pretty wife he keeps like an inedited coin, or fancies that he keeps to himself entirely. Few antiquaries have shown more enterprise than B——. Possessed of little, very little money in his youth, he did not, like many other Roman youths of this day, squander it away in cigars, and was under twenty when he undertook his first commercial expedition. He went into Egypt, could not buy the Pyramids, they were too large for his portmanteau; then into Greece; then to Sicily. He sailed to Syracuse, landed at Naxos, sacked Taormina and Catania; came back and sold his curiosities well; went abroad again, and again returned like an industrious bee laden with spoils. Enriched at length by these numerous journeys, he was able to purchase a vineyard, and to plant it. His next step was to build a villa upon it, and to marry an ancient dame, who, dying shortly, left him at liberty to marry again. The lady whom he now calls his own being at the time poor, his treasures soon won her heart, while his house flattered her ambition, and so they made a match of it; and she now accompanies him in most of his antiquarian prowling excursions during the summer; and the ménage, on the whole, for an Italian ménage, goes on well enough.
One day—(this was when, by much frequentation of the premises, we had become intimate with its inmates)—one day we had just been ringing an Etruscan vase, and liked the sound thereof; and examining the painting, we liked that too; and therefore, agreeing as to price, completed the purchase, and were sitting between old husband and young wife, round a brazier mounted on an ancient tripod, with a handful of gems, loculis quæ custoditur eburnis, talking carelessly, and taking our impressions of them, and of the stones, as we talked. It was a fête day, and, now we came to notice it, Madame B—— was en grande toilette, and had been hearing Padre S—— preach, as she informed us, at St Carlo's in the Corso. When she heard we had not been there, she sighed for our sakes—"Our friend should have heard Padre S—— to-day, is it not so?" to her husband, who assented to this good opinion of the Padre: "It was such a good sermon! all about doing as you would be done by—no loophole for a self-deceiver to escape by. I only wish A—— had been there to hear it." "Bagatello!" said Signor B——, stirring the brazier, "Do you think he would not have cheated Lord V—— just the same in this head of Medusa, which he palmed off upon him for an antique, knowing it was a Calandrelli? Good sermons are thrown away upon some people." "Well," sighed the lady, looking up to the ceiling, and then taking a second dose of it—"well, at least we may apply it to ourselves." "Not a bit of it. We never apply any thing to ourselves. Do you think, for instance, when I married you, I sought to mate me with a lark, or a nightingale—risponde." She had no difficulty in doing so. "And was I not a lark till my poor sister died—poverella—eighteen months ago?" "Si, Signora! but since that time you treat me with coldness; are always looking up to the sky; and always telling me your soul is with her soul in Paradise. No Paradise for me! What think you, sir?" "We always sided with those who were suffering from the loss of friends." "Bene, bene, for three months or so—'twas all very well, natural. But beyond this? Besides, though it were ever so sincere—what was the use of it?" "Oh! of no use, of course," said we. "I shall never give over mourning for her, I promise you that," said the lady, much moved. The husband shrugged his shoulders; said, "That all women were more or less foolish;" and asked us if we were married? Before we had time to answer, in came Padre S——, whose sermon had made such impression on B—— and his wife. We now sit all around the brazier; both wife and husband being, for some time, loud in their praises, which were somewhat extravagant! "It was a divine sermon—St Paul could not have preached a better"—when the good man hopes it may, by God's blessing, do good, politely acknowledges the compliment implied in our regrets that we had not been of the auditory, and then rises to look round, Signor B—— doing the honours, at the curiosities of the shop; at the sight of several objects of virtù, he expresses, somewhat naïvely, great pleasure—would like to have seen more, but has another sermon to deliver in St Jacomo—the bell is ringing!—he must say idio at once. As he makes his exit, (Madame kisses his hand first,) two other visitors present themselves; the one a young Roman, who comes to console her; the other a young English nobleman, who comes to buy in haste, and will have to repent at leisure afterwards. In five minutes, Madame seems to have entirely forgotten her sister; B—— his wife! The one is receiving comfort in compliment; the other, in cash! Hush! Surely we heard Lord A—— ask if that vamped old vase, which will fall some day to pieces, was antique; and B——assert that it was! Why, the paint is scarcely dry on its sides! Lord A——'s unlucky eye lights upon a bust, which, when he gets it over to England, he may match at the stone-mason's in the New Road, and at half-price—two words, three syllables, and the purchase is made "Chi?" Whose bust is it? "Cicero's," of course! "Quanto," what's the price of it? "Twenty Napoleons!" You old rogue B——! you are safe in sending it to Terny's, packed; for, if it should be seen, you might have to refund the purchase-money. Necdum finitus? Another bust tempts him; he inquires, and finds it is a Jove—a Jove! and is
"Jupiter, hæc nec labra moves, quum mittere vocem
Debueras, vel marmoreus, vel aheneus?
... Quod nullum discrimen habendum est
Effigies inter vestras, statuamque Bathylli?"
And this too, he buys for twenty Napoleons more; and having paid the purchase-money, away goes the possessor of Jupiter, and at the same juncture away goes the Cavaliere—each perfectly satisfied with his visit.
"Molto intelligente, that countryman of yours," said B——, spelling his card. "He seems to take things very much upon trust," said we. "'Tis a pity he don't understand Italian or French better. Otherwise, I might have perhaps suggested better things than those he has actually chosen. But after all," added he, "people don't like being put out of conceit with their own opinions; and think you personally interested, if you offer yours unasked." "I should have been sorry to have taken that vase as antique, as he has done; or to have paid the tenth of the price he has paid you for it." "Oh! don't be afraid; he can afford it—an English gentleman!—and to him it is worth what he paid for it; else, if he did not think so, who forced him to take it?" "I wonder now what Father S—— would have said to it;" asked Madame of her husband, looking up to the ceiling, and sighing. "Nothing, 'twas not in his province to pronounce judgment in such a matter." We too wondered, perhaps, what he might have said to Madame, touching her Cavaliere, whose discourse seemed to have told almost as powerfully on her as his sermon at St Carlo's. We wondered, but to ourselves, and making the common-place remark, that it seemed easier to preach than to practise, exchanged smiles with B—— and his wife, and withdrew, to think over what we had seen; and to arrive at our own conclusions, touching the general utility of fashionable and popular preaching!