"Then the Fanti of the coloured robes bowed their heads and trembled, and acknowledged in penitence and humility—'Truly the Fante of the white rocks is the most beautiful thing in the world!'
"Who can go to Carrara, my auntie, and not feel this?"
We were for a few days at Turin. The society there was then, as it is still, the very climax of stagnation. One of its most admired ornaments was a beautiful young Contessa la Marmora. She did nothing all day, absolutely nothing, but sit looking pretty, with her chin leaning on her hand. Her mother-in-law was rather more energetic than herself, and hoping to rouse her, left a new "Journal des Modes" upon her table. Some days after, she asked what she thought of it. "Alas!" said the young Countess, with her beautiful head still leaning upon her hand, "I have been so much occupied, that I never have found time to look into it." In all my acquaintance since with Italian ladies, I have always found the same, that they are all intensely occupied, but that it is in doing—nothing!
Since the dreadful epidemic at court, which swept away at once the Queen, the Queen-Dowager, and the Duke of Genoa, the King had never received, and as his eldest daughter, Madame Clotilde, was not old enough to do so, there were no court parties. At the opera all the young ladies sat facing the stage, and the old ladies away from it; but when the ballet began there was a general change; the old ladies moved to the front, and the young ones went behind.
A great contrast to the Italians at Turin was Mr. Ruskin, whom we saw constantly. He was sitting all day upon a scaffold in the gallery, copying bits of the great picture by Paul Veronese. My mother was very proud of my drawings at this time, and gave them to him to look at. He examined them all very carefully and said nothing for some time. At last he pointed out one of the cathedral at Perugia as "the least bad of a very poor collection." One day in the gallery, I asked him to give me some advice. He said, "Watch me." He then looked at the flounce in the dress of a maid of honour of the Queen of Sheba for five minutes, and then he painted one thread: he looked for another five minutes, and then he painted another thread.[135] At the rate at which he was working he might hope to paint the whole dress in ten years: but it was a lesson as to examining what one drew well before drawing it. I said to him, "Do you admire all Paul Veronese's works as you do this?" He answered, "I merely think that Paul Veronese was ordained by Almighty God to be an archangel, neither more nor less; for it was not only that he knew how to cover yards of canvas with noble figures and exquisite colouring, it was that it was all right. If you look at other pictures in this gallery, or any gallery, you will find mistakes, corrected perhaps, but mistakes of every form and kind; but Paul Veronese had such perfect knowledge, he never made mistakes."
The Charles Bunsens were at Turin, and we dined with them. With Mrs. C. Bunsen was her brother, whom we thought a very dull, heavy young man. Long afterwards he became very well known as the French Ambassador, Waddington.
We saw Mr. Ruskin again several times in the Vaudois, whither we went from Turin, and stayed for several days at La Tour, riding on donkeys to the wild scene of the Waldensian battle in the valley of Angrogna, and jolting in a carriage to the beautiful villages of Villar and Bobbio—"une vraie penitence," as our driver expressed it, though the scenery is lovely. My mother was charmed to find an old woman at La Tour who had known Oberlin very well and had lived in his parish.
Amongst the endless little out-of-the-way excursions which my mother, Lea, and I have made together in little chars-à-banc, one of those I remember with greatest pleasure is that from Vergogna up the Val Anzasca. The scenery was magnificent: such a deep gorge, with purple rocks breaking through the rich woods, and range upon range of distant mountains, with the snows of Monte Rosa closing them in. We stayed at a charming little mountain inn at Ponte Grande, where everything was extraordinarily cheap, and wandered in the meadows filled with globe-ranunculus and over-shadowed by huge chestnut-trees. In the evening the charcoal-burners came down from the mountains, where we had watched the smoke of the fires all day amongst the woods, and serenaded us under our windows, singing in parts, with magnificent voices, most effective in the still night. We were afterwards at Domo d'Ossola for a Sunday for the extraordinary fête of the imaginary Santa Filomena—kept all day with frantic enthusiasm, cannons firing, bells ringing, and processions of girls in white, chaunting as they walked, pouring in from all the country parishes in the neighbourhood.