Among the streets the spring cannot make itself quite so well remembered, nor can the sun have such an effect, but here, as elsewhere, April, May, and even March have quite another beauty from January. The sunlight is dashed even across the dark narrowness of Via San-Luca, and streams across the Piazza Soziglia to light upon the very counter of Signor Giordano’s shop. Surely bargains must be the less sharply driven, and the smiles of fair purchasers the more persuasive! But then Tuesday is the night of la marchesa Bice’s ball, and one must make one’s profit when one can, for in a small town, where the people are proverbially stingy, ’tis not every day that business is to be done!
Il Signor Giordano is a great man in Genoa. He has the largest shop for the novelties of fashion, and is moreover almost the only one of the first negozianti who go to London as well as to Paris for spring and autumn modes. On the other hand, he is not too expensive! He has his own interest at heart, of course, but he thinks to further it better by a judicious lowness of price than by an assumption of foreign exorbitance, as some others do. Then he is not impervious to female flattery, and something can be done with him in this wise! The windows of Signor Giordano’s shop are of plate-glass. Years ago there were no shops in Genoa that had plate-glass for windows, that had any windows at all in fact, just as there were no cittadine, or cabs, in the streets, and private carriages were so few that one could tell them all apart by their liveries: just as there were no gas lanterns but only oil lamps in the public thoroughfares. Even now the shops that have real plate-glass windows are few enough, and those that have them so broad and so fine as Signor Giordano are fewer still. His premises are large, large for a provincial town of Italy—and his young shopmen are civil, his goods deftly displayed in the window; all these advantages go to make the store in Via Soziglia one of the town’s favourites. So to-day it is well beset with female customers—prudent and economical mammas, eager daughters, placidly lavish young matrons, who are the most acceptable of all to Signor Giordano—everybody wants some adornment, great or small, for the coming festivity. A neat brougham stops at the door, whence there steps a slim-figured and pale-faced little dame, tastefully dressed in the latest of Paris fashions. ‘It is the Contessa Capramonte, per Bacco,’ says the foreman in the front shop to the great Signor Giordano, who is reading his Corriere behind. [The Corriere is the great mercantile paper.] ‘Excellent! Show her those new gauzes that we had last night;’ then advancing to meet this most graceful of customers, ‘Your servant, madam,’ bows the vender of fashions to their wearer; ‘what might be your ladyship’s pleasure this afternoon?’
And soon the hopeful comer is on the usual high wooden stool before the counter, all the new Paris gauzes displayed for her choice, with a dark and tall and perfumed young man to show them off, and the proprietor himself close at hand to take advice of, to jest and chat with besides, as these Italian ladies are never afraid to jest with their social inferiors. ‘Pretty,’ ejaculates she, admiringly, as the tall young man crushes and drapes a citron-coloured gauze the better for the sunlight to catch and beautify it! ‘But with that stuff I shall need a silk dress of the colour besides; it will cost me too much!’ ‘Truly your ladyship has the love of fun,’ laughs fat Signor Giordano at her elbow; ‘we know pretty well what the Contessa Capramonte has for money!’ ‘Truly,’ pouts the pretty lady; ‘you are a good husband one can see. Do you not reflect on the face which that sour-visaged Count will make when I bring him the bill, and have no more money, of the poor pittance he gives me, to pay it with? Oh, but I must reflect upon it, however!’ ‘The bill will not arrive yet awhile, and then, when the Signor Conte sees your ladyship in that dress, whose colour fits so perfectly to the complexion, which is the talk of our town——!’ ‘Come, have a care,’ laughs the lady back again, but with no foolish blush. Then considering, while the fatal look of indecision comes slowly to her pretty face, ‘for the rest you are right, Signor Giordano; no colour suits me so well, and with an assortment of tea-roses——’ ‘And the diamonds of the Capramonte family,’ puts in the great man, dexterously. ‘Yes, with the diamonds, perhaps,’ ruminates she. ‘Holy Madonna! it will be a sight for men to come from far and wide to see,’ murmurs the gauze vendor, fervently, and the dark youth ejaculates, ‘I believe it!’ as he is paid to do.
‘Well, I suppose I must,’ sighs the customer, and then there comes a question of quantity, and the Signor Giordano’s advice is again required about the number of metres for skirt, tunic, scarf and bodice, the which great matter cannot be decided until the manner of making have also been chosen, for la Contessa says that for economy she is going to have this dress made at home by her maid! It is pretty well certain the matter will be settled and unsettled over again at least twenty times by maid and mistress when the latter gets home, but meanwhile it pleases her to discuss it with the shopman, so forty metres are at last pronounced to be the necessary amount, and the lady can always have more afterwards, remarks the perfumed shop-youth with appropriate judgment.
SHOPMAN AND PURCHASER.
‘Two francs a metre, you said, did you not?’ asks the Countess, innocently, watching the soft silk stuff being measured out. ‘Dear madam, no; three francs,’ corrects Signor Giordano with all suavity, and still the pale-coloured folds pass quickly through the hands of the tall young man. His thumb is on the great scissors, he has counted the forty metres, but ‘Stop, stop!’ cries the lady’s eager voice; ‘I must do without the dress, then—for certainly all that money, 120 francs, Dio, never shall I obtain it from my husband! Pity,’ adds she, rising gracefully, and replacing the high stool in its place, ‘for the colour suits me to perfection, and the stuff pleases me; this satin stripe is new, and looks well—but 120 francs—heaven forbid!’ ‘Eh, well,’ concedes the shopman, glancing at his humble satellite over the counter, ‘what do you think? For such a customer it would be worth while to make a reduction, is it not true? She would make such a figure, per Bacco! Let us make it two francs and eighty centimes. For you I will make a sacrifice,’ adds il Signor Giordano, with an admiring bow, ‘only’—and this in a lower tone—‘her ladyship will not mention the price.’ The concession is indifferently well received. Scoffs the customer, with a pretty toss of her small head, ‘I do not jest! Two francs a metre, or else I buy my dress elsewhere; and if I cannot find another to my taste, I stay at home to-morrow night.’ This is said poutingly, and master and man utter at once a deprecating ejaculation. ‘Two francs!’ pleads the former; ‘sweet lady, I couldn’t do it! If heaven had but been more generous to me, how proudly would I have made a gift of the thing which has been fortunate enough to please you, but——’ ‘Preposterous!’ laughs the beauty,’what a good thing that I know you! Well—make it two francs and thirty centesimi! You will not? Oh, well, I find my dress easily elsewhere. And there are to be many ladies of great beauty at la marchesa’s on Tuesday night. I should have required silk for the skirt too!’ These parting shafts are sent home as the lady retreats gracefully to the door. ‘Addio,’ nods she, and the plate-glass swings to behind her, the citron-coloured gauze is folded away off the counter. Yet both vendor and purchaser know well enough it will be out again in a trice, and addressed, moreover, to the Palazzo Capramonte.
So sure, in fact, is the shopman of this that when, five minutes later, another and less constant customer sees, admires, and would purchase that frail fabric, he is not afraid positively to state that forty metri of it are sold to the Contessa Capramonte; he is not ashamed either, when asked the price by this next customer, to give it only as two francs and fifty centesimi, but then this second lady is a foreigner, and will not bargain, and the Signor Giordano knows exactly how much to put on, because he knows how much a Genoese lady will have off before she buys. Is it waste of time? Not at all, the shopman will tell you—only part of the day’s work.
The Contessa walks leisurely from Soziglia down the Via de’ Orefici, and goes into a jeweller’s shop in this jewellers’ street, where, over lumps of pale pink coral and finely-wrought trinkets of silver and gilt-silver filigree, she plays her play over again, to come out triumphant with a necklace, whose dainty lumps and loops and wires are cunningly fashioned into leaves and roses. The necklace is not for herself, for a Genoese lady despises the produce of that darkly, strangely winding street, where the booths stand out freely to view, and glitter with the light silver wares, or are rich with the red heavy coral; but bargaining comes to her as second nature, so she has fought none the less bravely over the trinket because the commission is for a foreign friend. Thoughts of that dress have not strayed from her mind all the same, and before the Contessa drives out of Soziglia the citron gauze has been purchased for two francs and fifty centesimi the metro, which was the exact sum on which Signor Giordano meant they should meet from the beginning; and silk to match, and flowers, and ribbons have been added to the bill, all for something more than the one, for something less than the other said at first. So la Contessa goes home to her palace at Carignano, where banksia roses are blooming against the wall, and pink and white fruit-blossoms in the villa, while a purple Judas-tree is a-flower before the house. And the Signor Giordano goes home to the flat in Castelletto, where, though it is five storeys high, flowers still bloom upon the terrace and over the pergola, for winter is past, and we are in spring-time.