‘Not for the world. I would sooner present it myself to San Lorenzo.’
And so the bargaining goes on for, perhaps, half-an-hour, until the prize is carried off for some two or three centimes more than the first sum offered by the purchaser. No Genoese marketer would dream of buying at the price demanded, nor a seller of asking at first the price he means to take at last.
In the Via dé Orefici, or the Goldsmiths’ Street, there are also booths set up, and the palm-plaiting is going on vigorously. This street is narrow, too narrow to be one of the main thoroughfares; but it is also one of the most picturesque of the town. Most of the jewellers’ shops have no plate-glass windows, they stand out into the street, as it were, because the frames in which the gold-work is set are fixed to the outer walls; and the shops themselves are freely open to the passers, their glittering display of gold and silver filigree making the way brightly gorgeous with a character that is quite peculiar. There is no room for booths in the Via dé Orefici, but in a little piazza close by, called the Piazza di Campetto, the buying and selling of the palms go on busily. Throngs of people stream out thence into the narrow streets around, where palaces stand up stately on either side and, through a strip of blue sky above, the sun looks down furtively upon dark and winding ways that are bright now with colour and alive with hurrying folk. They are alive and strong and busy, yet even in their bustle and merriment they seem like some picture of the old life in those by-gone days when the lordly palaces and winding streets first grew into being.
As the night draws on, the workers kindle rough pine torches, whose fierce uneven light flares and flickers across the piazza and upon the faces of near bystanders; the sky looks black then overhead, and there are black shadows side by side with the red glare. The sale of palms must cease early on the Sunday morning, so that by Saturday night the holders of booths are well pleased to have their stock nearly disposed of. At all events the palms must be ready plaited to be set in the large market before sunrise to-morrow, because by eight o’clock the Piazza S. Domenico must be clear, even of marketers who have left their purchase to the last minute before church time.
Masses are being sung betimes, and the churches will be crowded long before the great service of the day at eleven o’clock. The streets are full to overflowing. Through the great Piazza delle Fontane Amorose the people flock in a strange medley, each class in special attire. There are women of the merchant class, complacent in new spring dresses, who wear their fresh muslin pezzotti after the new mode, the better to display their cunningly-plaited hair and ornaments of finely-wrought gold. There are servant-girls who have not much gold to show, but whose tresses are even more prettily arranged: and these smooth their black-silk aprons with an air of superiority as they note the factory girls, who have theirs only of woollen stuff. There are people of the gentry, who wear silk dresses and bonnets of Paris fashion, as they think, but these do not appear to much advantage on a day like this. Then there are peasant women, whose gorgeous red and orange-coloured kerchiefs serve better than all the rest to paint the streets over with brilliant tone; their ornaments are of massive gold moulded into ancient forms, the scarves that drape their heads and shoulders of many colours grotesquely designed, and of thicker material than the town-women’s muslin pezzotti; they call the thick scarf mezzaro.
The crowds wend their way through the town to the different churches, and now before the ducal palace they begin to grow denser than ever, for this is the way to the cathedral, where the Archbishop of Genoa is to bless the palms himself, at high mass. The great steps of the Duomo are covered with the multitude; the people press up them between the carven lions, through the beautiful gateways, and stand thickly packed beneath the central arch, where St. Laurence lies stretched on the torturing irons, and still other people are fighting their way through the piazza, and keep pouring in from the back streets. Boys and girls, men and women, mothers with swaddled infants, children that can barely walk alone and that have to be perched on the great lions which flank the steps of the Duomo, that they may have a chance of a sight of the procession; old women with ugly faces, who seem to be the more devout for their ugliness; men, of whom many make but a poor show even of outward respect;—all are jostled together upon the steps and in the entrances; and within the church’s aisles more people again are moving.
ON-LOOKERS AT THE PROCESSION OF PALMS.
The chanting and preaching begin within, varied now and then by the rise and fall of barely suppressed voices throughout the nave. Then the procession comes forth—banners and images, and crowds of children bearing their white palms. The priest’s monotone continues within, and the procession outside makes answer. Its flag-bearers knock upon the gates of the church, and then the palms and the banners enter again. There is more of the ceremony, but even the people attend but sparingly to it. The crowd lingers awhile; some kneel on the steps to pray, some enter the cathedral as best they can for benediction; many more wait about outside and talk and laugh and gesticulate, but when mass is done, mothers and fathers claim their children from out the procession, and the multitudes disperse quietly.