In such chat my days pass by. I feel as though I had dropped down somewhere in the Sabine Mountains, been well received in a house--Maria is from Camarino, too,--and were living there hidden from the world among these big children.
Yesterday, Uncle had his National Guard uniform on for the first time. He came in to show himself. I told him that it suited him very well, which delighted him. Filomena exhibited him with admiration. When Maria came home later on, she asked the others at once: "Has the signore seen him? What did he say? Does not he want to see him again?"
Written down a score of ritornellos; I have chosen the best of them. Many of them are rather, or very, indecent. But, as Filomena says: "You do not go to Hell for singing canzone; you cannot help what they are like." The indecent ones she will only say at a terrific rate, and not a second time. But if one pay attention, they are easy to understand. They are a mixture of audacity and simple vulgarity. They all begin with flowers. She is too undeveloped to share the educated girl's abhorrence of things that are in bad taste; everything natural, she thinks, can be said, and she speaks out, quite unperturbed. Still, now she understands that there are certain things--impossible things-- that I do not like to hear her say.
I was sitting cutting a wafer (to take powders with) into oblates. She: "You must not cut into consecrated things, not even put the teeth into it. The priest says: 'Thou shalt not bite Christ.'" Unfortunately, she has not any real impression of religion, either of its beauty or its underlying truth. None of them have any idea of what the New Testament is or contains; they do not know its best-known quotations and stories. Religion, to them, is four or five rigmaroles, which are printed in our Abecedario, the Creed, the Ave Maria, the various Sacraments, etc., which they know by heart. These they reject, but they have not the slightest conception of what Christianity is. If I quote a text from the New Testament, they have never heard it.
But they can run the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven other virtues, off by rote. One of these last, that of instructing the ignorant, is a virtue which the priesthood (partly for good reasons) have not practised to any remarkable extent in this country.
Yesterday Maria came home in a state of great delight, from a trattoria, where a gentleman had spoken tanto bene, tanto bene against religion and the Pope and the priests; there were a few Caccialepri present (a derogatory expression for adherents of the priests), who had just had to come down a peg or two. When she had finished, to my astonishment, she said to me, exactly this: "It is Nature that is God, is it not so?"
An expression almost symbolical of the ignorance and credulity of the Romans is their constant axiom, Chi lo sa? (Who knows?) I said to Maria the other day, after she had said it for the fourth time in a quarter of an hour: "My good Maria! The beginning of wisdom is not to fear God, but to say Perche? (why?), instead of Chi lo sa?"
Yesterday, while I was eating my dinner, I heard Filomena's story. She came to Rome last December: "You think I came because Maria wanted to help mother. I came to Rome because there was a man who wanted to marry me." "What was his name?" "His name was Peppe." "Lo mi' amore, che si chiama Peppe."... "Ah, I do not love him at all. No, the thing is that at Camerino all the men beat their wives. My sister, for instance, has always a black eye, and red stripes on her back. My friend Marietta always gets beaten by her husband, and the more he beats her, the more she loves him: sometimes she goes away from him for a few days to her sister, but she always goes back again." "What has that to do with our friend Peppe?" "Well, you see, mother knew that Peppe's brother beat his wife all day and all night; so she would not give me to him." "Yes, it was bad, if it were a family failing." "So one evening father said to me: 'Your aunt has written to us from Rome, to ask whether you will pay her a visit of a few days.' And he showed me a false letter. Aunt cannot write and knew nothing about any letter. I did not want to, much, said I would not, but came here all the same, and found that I was to stay here, and that mother did not want me to have Peppe. So I began to cry, and for five whole days I cried all the time and would neither eat nor drink. Then I thought to myself: It is all over between Peppe and me. Shall I cry myself to death for a man? So I left off crying, and very soon forgot all about him. And after a week's time I did not care anything about the whole matter, and sang and was happy, and now I want to stay in Rome always."
Last night I got up for a little, read with Filomena, and determined to go in and have supper with the family in their little room. Filomena opened the door wide, and called out along the corridor: "Eccolo!" and then such a welcome as there was for the invalid, now that he had at last got up! and I was obliged to drink two large beer-glasses of the home-grown wine. First Maria told how it was that I had always had everything so punctually whilst I was ill. It was because Filomena had made the little boy from the café believe that I was going to give him my watch when I got well, if he never let anything get cold. So the boy ran as though possessed, and once fell down the stairs and broke everything to atoms. "He is delirious," said Filomena one day, "and talks of nothing but of giving you his watch." "How can he be so ill," said the boy suspiciously, "when he eats and drinks?" "Do you want the watch or not?" said Filomena, and off the lad ran. I let the others entertain me. Maria said: "You told Filomena something yesterday about savages; I know something about them, too. Savage people live in China, and the worst of all are called Mandarins. Do you know what one of them did to an Italian lady? She was with her family over there; suddenly there came a Mandarin, carried her off, and shut her up in his house. They never found her again. Then he had three children by her; but one day he went out and forgot to shut the door; she ran quickly out of the house, down to the water, and saw a ship far away. Do you know what the mandarin did, sir, when he came home and found that his wife was gone? He took the three children, tore them through the middle, and threw the pieces out into the street." It reminded one of Lucidarius, and other mediaeval legends. Then our good zio, the honest uncle, began, and told Maria and Filomena the history of Napoleon I., fairly correctly. He had heard it from his master Leonardo, who taught him his trade; the man had taken part in five of the campaigns. The only egregious mistake he made was that he thought the Austrians had gradually poisoned the Duke of Reichstadt, because he threatened to become even more formidable than his father. But that the old grenadier might easily have believed. The thing that astonished me was that the narrative did not make the slightest impression upon either Maria or Filomena. I asked Filomena if she did not think it was very remarkable. But she clearly had a suspicion that it was all lies, besides, what has happened in the world before her day is of as little importance to her as what goes on in another planet; finally, she abominates war. Zio concluded his story with childlike self-satisfaction: "When I learnt about all this, I was only an apprentice; now I am mastro Nino."
These last few days that I have been able to stumble about the room a little, I have had a feeling of delight and happiness such as I have hardly experienced before. The very air is a fête. The little black- haired youngsters, running about this picturesquely steep street, are my delight, whenever I look out of the window. All that is in front of me: the splendours of Rome, the Summer, the art of Italy, Naples in the South, Venice in the North, makes my heart beat fast and my head swim. I only need to turn round from the window and see Filomena standing behind me, knitting, posed like a living picture by Küchler to feel, with jubilation: I am in Rome. Saredo came to-day at twelve o'clock, and saw me dressed for the first time. I had put on my nicest clothes. I called Filomena, had three dinners fetched, and seated between him and her, I had my banquet. I had just said: "I will not eat any soup to-day, unless it should happen to be Zuppa d'herba." Filomena took the lid off and cried: "A punto." This is how all my wishes are fulfilled now. I had a fine, light red wine. It tasted so good that if the gods had known it they would have poured their nectar into the washtub. Filomena poured it out, singing: