With abominable slowness, and very late, "on account of the war," the train crawled from Geneva, southwards. Among the travellers was a rhetorical Italian master-mason, from Lyons, an old Garibaldist, the great event of whose life was that Garibaldi had once taken lunch alone with him at Varese. He preserved in his home as a relic the glass from which the general had drunk. He was talkative, and ready to help everyone; he gave us all food and drink from his provisions. Other travellers told that they had had to stand in queue for fully twelve hours in front of the ticket office in Paris, to get away from the town.
The train passed the place where Rousseau had lived, at Madame de Warens'. In an official work on Savoy, written by a priest, I had recently read a summary dismissal of Rousseau, as a calumniator of his benefactress. According to this author, it certainly looked as though, to say the least of it, Rousseau's memory had failed him amazingly sometimes. The book asserted, for instance, that the Claude of whom he speaks was no longer alive at the time when he was supposed to be enjoying Madame de Warens' favours.
We passed French volunteers in blouses bearing a red cross; they shouted and were in high good humour; passed ten districts, where numbers of cretins, with their hideous excrescences, sat by the wayside. At last we arrived,--several hours behind time,--at St. Michel, at the foot of Mont Cenis; it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and I was beginning to feel tired, for I had been up since four in the morning. At five o'clock we commenced the ascent, to the accompaniment of frightful groanings from the engine; all the travellers were crowded together in three wretched little carriages, the small engine not being able to pull more. Gay young French girls exulted at the idea of seeing "Italy's fair skies." They were not particularly fair here; the weather was rough and cloudy, in keeping with abysms and mountain precipices. But late at night the journey over Mont Cenis was wonderful. High up on the mountain the moonlight gleamed on the mountain lake. And the way was dominated, from one rocky summit, by the castle of Bramans with its seven imposing forts.
The locomotive stopped for an hour, for want of water. We were thus obliged to sleep at the little Italian town of Susa (in a glorious valley under Mont Cenis), the train to Turin having left three hours before. Susa was the first Italian town I saw. When the train came in next morning to the station at Turin, a crowd of Italian soldiers, who were standing there, shouted: "The Prussians for ever!" and winked at me. "What are they shouting for?" I asked a young Turin fellow with whom I had had some long conversations. "It is an ovation to you," he replied. "People are delighted at the victory of the Prussians, and they think you are a Prussian, because of your fair moustache and beard."
XXXVI.
An overwhelming impression was produced upon me by the monuments of Turin, the River Po, and the lovely glee-singing in the streets. For the first time, I saw colonnades, with heavy curtains to the street, serve as pavements, with balconies above them. Officers in uniforms gleaming with gold, ladies with handkerchiefs over their heads instead of hats, the mild warmth, the brown eyes, brought it home to me at every step that I was in a new country.
I hurried up to Costanza Blanchetti. Madame la comtesse est à la campagne. Monsieur le comte est sorti. Next morning, as I was sitting in my room in the Hotel Trombetta, Blanchetti rushed in, pressed me to his bosom, kissed me on both cheeks, would not let me go, but insisted on carrying me off with him to the country.
We drove round the town first, then went by rail to Alpignano, where Costanza was staying with a relative of the family, Count Buglioni di Monale. Here I was received like a son, and shown straight to my room, where there stood a little bed with silk hangings, and where, on the pillow, there lay a little, folded-up thing, likewise of white silk, which was an enigma to me till, on unfolding it, I found it was a night- cap, the classical night-cap, tapering to a point, which you see at the theatre in old comedies. The Buglionis were gentle, good-natured people, rugged and yet refined, an old, aristocratic country gentleman and his wife. Nowhere have I thought grapes so heavy and sweet and aromatic as there. The perfume from the garden was so strong and fragrant. Impossible to think of a book or a sheet of paper at Alpignano. We walked under the trees, lay among the flowers, enjoyed the sight and the flavour of the apricots and grapes, and chatted, expressing by smiles our mutual quiet, deep-reaching sympathy.
One evening I went into Turin with Blanchetti to see the play. The lover in La Dame aux Camélias was played by a young Italian named Lavaggi, as handsome as an Antinous, a type which I often encountered in Piedmont. With his innate charm, restful calm, animation of movement and the fire of his beauty, he surpassed the acting of all the young lovers I had seen on the boards of the French theatres. The very play of his fingers was all grace and expression.