So it comes to be just about once in a month that la Signora Pareto thinks it is time to have the children’s faces washed and their short hair, that was shaved last summer, brushed up in a ridge on their crowns, and their hats with the bright flowers and feathers put on, while she herself dons silken and trailing garments for a walk in the lime-scented Acquasola. Who would believe this to be the same Signora Pareto who, with heel-trodden slippers and loosened gown, stirs the polenta, and fans the fire, and shrilly scolds the children on the top floor of No. 4 Via degl’Uffiziali? And who would recognise in the primly-walking and stiffly-dressed boys and girls of the public gardens those scantily-attired mortals who hunt the house-top above the sixth floor, and peril their necks on dangerous parapets, and furtively feel for small spoil in the kitchen, and get whipped for venial sins in theft and fibbing?
The lady mother walks with portly, swaying frame and upright head, that black tresses profusely adorn; behind her trail yards of green silk in the gravel’s dust, and on her broad bosom, mock gold and stones glitter, for alas, she is not of the peasant women, who fear aught but the true metal! And the children plod primly two-and-two, with all that tells of childhood carefully hidden from the much-revered gaze of the world, and too proud of furbelowed frocks to think of any other enjoyment, to borrow any youthful glee from the sweet-scented acacias or the flowering laburnum and purple Judas-blossoms.
No wonder that not much of country pink flushes the cheeks of the poor town-bred babies who get so little fresh, free air; no wonder that from time to time the town-bred mother, who thinks more of outward show than of any other human advantage, begins to note the pallid hue on her offsprings’ faces, begins to long for a bit of rough life, where they can rejoice in heaven’s pure air without new frocks, and where her own battered slippers and torn skirts will be good enough to breathe a mouthful of honest wind in, when the wind blows around homely meadows and cottages, where the great world’s criticism does not, happily, penetrate.
La Signora Pareto has a brother-in-law who is a great negoziante; he is rich, richer far than herself—which is a trial when one is in town, for appearances must be kept up and the brother-in-law’s wife has to be vied with! But when the time comes for going in villeggiatura then those riches in the family are an advantage, because there is a little house up in the Apennines, some mile or two from Busalla, that belongs to the brother-in-law, and which one may have for very little money, if a little squabbling and haggling be added thereto.
So one day at the end of July the family from the sixth floor in Via degl’Uffiziali makes a move. The maid-of-all-work is sent home—in the country one does not only half, but all, the cooking oneself, and has a village girl in to help! The good papa takes charge of numbers four, five, and six, because his arms are the strongest; the shrill-voiced mamma attempts to keep three elder boys in order, whose spirits are quite too much for them at the prospect, first of a journey, and then of green trees, and fruit to plunder! One kisses the neighbours all the way down the staircase—inmates of pianos five, four, &c.—one reaches the station, one takes many a second-class ticket, half and whole. After an hour’s slow progress, sitting in a railway carriage, with the din of children in the ears, and, in the nostrils, the smell of truffles and fish and such things as cannot be procured in the country, one descends at last on the platform of a little station, and lifts out the joyful half-dozen of one’s progeny!
How green the trees are, how fresh the breeze, even along the dusty highway, that would lead across the mountains of the Giove, were one not minded to turn aside and follow the torrent’s course to left! Paolo and Checchino, and even the little Emilia, feel it blow pleasantly, indeed, upon their almost bare heads that were short-shaven again yesterday for the season of recess! They caper gladly along the road, while father and mother exchange greetings and compliments with fruit-sellers and barbers in the town’s little street, with peasant men and women as they strike out into the free country beyond.
In Villeggiatura.
“Madonna, what a heat!” complains the town lady, while the papa trudges on wearily in front with babies two and three.