GENEVRA;
OR, THE
HISTORY OF A PORTRAIT.
CHAPTER I.
“Clarence, my dear fellow, pray ring the bell, and let us know when that confounded dinner will be ready; the carriage will be here before we are ready for a drive to the Campagna.”
I felt out of spirits and in an ill mood; but mechanically I rose and rang the bell. Our Italian attendant soon made his appearance. “Peppo,”—demanded my friend, the Hon. Augustus Morton, in a mixture of bad Italian and French, which he had learned during our two weeks’ sojourn at Rome,—“Peppo, when will dinner be ready? Don’t you know I told you this morning to prepare for us a nice English dinner, and have it early too?”
“Si Signor,” replied Peppo, standing with his toes bent in, twisting a dirty velvet cap in his hand, ornamented round the edge with tarnished gilt lace, “ma Signor Inglese, say cinque bra, non rolamente che tre ora adesso.”
“O, it’s only three, eh—how came I to make such a mistake?” He looked at his watch: it had stopped. “Well, Peppo,” he continued, in Italian, “can’t you tell them to hurry their operations, and let us have our dinner now. We have an engagement. Go and see if they cannot serve it at once.”
Peppo made his obeisance, and disappeared through the low, narrow door. “It is unfortunate that I did not think to set the time. We need not have returned from Tivoli for an hour.”
“I am not at all sorry, for my part,” I rejoined. “I take but little interest in broken columns, decayed monuments, and old ruins, places of assignations for owls and bats; in fact, one half the persons who visit Rome care no more about these remains of Rome’s ancient grandeur than the doves who make their nests amid the ruins. It has become fashionable of late years to visit Rome, and carry home from the city a collection of antique relics, busts, and every variety of curiosities, all of which are treasured as rare trophies of travel in classic land; a feeling I cannot at all sympathize with. You have the enthusiasm of the grandeur of Rome almost entirely to yourself, my friend. I assure you I have had but few attacks of the fashionable epidemic since my arrival.”