It was Fioravanti whom we loved the most, and whom we did really try to get over to us later. But it was a case of binding engagements on one side and the other. He had given his word, as a man of honour, to remain a year with his new family, and we were pledged to some new cook at the moment when he was free. So it all came to nothing—which was perhaps just as well. He was a choleric little man. Loki’s Mamma dreamt he stabbed the kitchen-maid and buried her in the garden, which was not at all an unlikely thing to happen, for, like Vatel, his dishes were his glory, his honour was bound up in them, and the race of Cinderellas in this land would inflame the blood of such an enthusiast.
ROMAN MEMORIES
This is not to say that all Italian servants are like those three. We had some very thrilling experiences in the shape of Roman rascality during our first weeks of housekeeping there. After the odd custom we had one woman servant to three men; and, as the genus housemaid does not exist at all in many parts of the Continent, we had extreme difficulty in procuring a donna di faccenda. We had a whole large house in the Via Gregoriana, and it was imperative we should have something female to scrub its bedrooms and bathrooms.—Scrub? It is not a word you could get any Roman to understand the meaning of, much less put into application; but still we had to get somebody to sweep the dust into the corner or under the rug, and pass an occasional wet rag languidly round the rim of a bath. Loki’s Ma-Ma, being the Italian scholar of the family, engaged the staff. She was enchanted with the appearance of a splendid young girl from the Campagna, with cheeks like ripe nectarines, and a coroneted black head. Alert and brisk as a mountain kid, she seemed to us. Alas! who could have thought it? The creature was a bacchante! She ordered in a cask of wine all for herself, and then ran out the second evening and never came in till the next morning. Having danced with Bacchus all night, she was altogether unfit for any Christian habitation in the morning. It may be all very well to sleep off the red fumes on a thymy bank in a pagan world; but it’s not at all poetical or attractive at close quarters within four walls! A sordid, pitiful, revolting business! And the happy mountain kid, who proved after all to be only a bad little gutter goat, had to be driven forth when the legs that had caracoled so much were able to crawl again.
Aristide had a profile like the head of a philosopher on a Roman coin. He was a magnificent driver. We had a pair of powerful, fiery Russian horses, and they wanted all his skill. Whenever they took to plunging—and when they did so they struck sparks out of the stones and filled the street with the thunder of their hoofs—Aristide’s method of reassuring “his family” was invariably to gather the reins in one hand and blow his nose with great désinvolture with the other. He always turned sideways to do this, flourishing an immense pocket-handkerchief, as one who would say: “Behold! how calm I am!... Have no fear!”
Only on the occasions when we discarded our carriage for the use of a motor was the harmony disturbed between Aristide and ourselves. He would droop on his box for days afterwards and take the characteristic Roman revenge of declining to shave.
Loki’s Grandmother developed a sudden and violent attack of influenza on one of these motor expeditions, and had to be conveyed home in a collapsed condition.
“Ah,” said Aristide, “if Mamma had been with me, this would not have happened! Autos are nasty feverish things.”
We were very sorry to leave our Roman house, with its delicious proximity to the Pincio. It was a very old house, with a round marble staircase, deep-grilled windows, and a delightful tiled inner courtyard filled with green, where a fountain splashed day and night—a courtyard into which the sunshine literally poured. A great many of the objects which now give us pleasure at Villino Loki we placed originally in that double drawing-room which the owners of the house had left in somewhat denuded condition.