By meal time several natives had dropped in, and our party at table grew garrulous and in time so numerous that to serve us became a serious problem to the hostess, who was neither lithe nor quick of movement. The supper began with una minestra, a plate of soup containing some species of macaroni and, as usual in these cheap alberghi, several species of scrap-iron. Then a bit of meat was doled out, somewhat to my surprise; for the price of this article is so high in Italy that a stew of kidneys, liver, sheep’s head, or fat-covered entrails is often the only offering. He who has the temerity and a heavy enough purse to order a cutlet or a bistecca in such an inn is looked upon with awe and envy as long as he remains. I seldom had either.
Following the meat dish—it is never served with it—came a bowl of vegetables, then a bit of fruit and a nibble of cheese for each of us. Wine, of course, had been much in evidence; the Italian has no conception of a meal without his national drink. The wayfarer may call for nothing to eat but the three-cent minestra, and la signora serves it as cheerily as a dinner at one lira; but let him refuse to order wine, and her sympathy is forever forfeited. When drowsiness fell upon me the hostess led the way to an airy, spacious room, its bed boasting a lace canopy, and its coarse sheets remarkably white in view of the fact that the Italian housewife does her work in the village brook, and never uses hot water. Such labor is cheap in the peninsula and for all this luxury I paid less than ten cents.
Early next day I pushed on toward Lecco. A light frost had fallen during the night, and the peasants, alarmed at this first breath of winter, had sent into the vineyards every man, woman, and child capable of labor. The pickers worked feverishly. All day women plodded from the fields to the roadside with great buckets of grapes to be dumped into hogsheads on waiting ox-carts. Men, booted or shod with wooden clogs, jumped now and then into the barrels and stamped the grapes down. Once full, the receptacles were covered with strips of dirty canvas, the contadino mounted his cart, turned his oxen into the highway, and fell promptly asleep. Arrived at the village, he drew up before the chute of the communal wine-press and shoveled his grapes into a slowly-revolving hopper, from which, crushed to an oozy pulp, they were run into huge vats and left to settle.
Halting for a morning lunch in the shadow of the statue of Manzoni, I rounded that range of mountains, so strangely resembling a saw, which shelters Lecco from the east wind, and continuing through the theater of action of “I Promessi Sposi,” gained Bergamo by nightfall. Beyond that city a level highway set an unchanging course across a vast, grape-bearing plain, watered by a network of canals. The Alps retired slowly to the northward until, at Brescia, only a phantom range wavered in the haze of the distant horizon.
About the time of my arrival in Italy, a strike had been declared in Milan. The Milanese motormen had refused to groom their horses or something of the sort. Once started, the movement was rapidly growing general and widespread. The newspapers bubbled over with it, the air about me was surcharged with raging arraignments of capitalistic iniquities. Strikes and lock-outs, however, were no affairs to trouble the peace of a foot-traveler. When trains ceased to run, I marched serenely on through clamoring groups of stranded voyagers; when the barbers closed their shops, I decided to raise a beard. The butchers joined the movement and I smiled with the indifference of one who had subsisted for weeks chiefly on bread.
The bakers of northern Italy concoct this important comestible in loaves of about the size and durability of baseballs. Serving in that capacity there is good reason to believe that one of them would remain unscathed at the end of a league game, though the score-book recorded many a three-bagger and home-run. Still, hard loaves soaked in wine, or crushed between two wayside rocks were edible, in a way; and, as long as they were plentiful, I could not suffer for lack of food.
A few miles beyond Brescia, however, the strike became a matter of personal importance. At each of the bakeries of a grumbling village I was turned away with the cry of:—
“Pane non ch’è! The strike! The bakers have joined the strike and no more bread is made!”
To satisfy that day’s appetite I was reduced to “paste,” a mushy mess of macaroni; and at a Verona inn I was robbed of half my sleep by the discussion of this new phase of the situation, that roared in the kitchen until long after midnight.
I was returning across the piazza next morning, from an early view of the picturesque bridges and the ancient Colosseum of Verona, when I fell upon a howling mob at the gateway of the city hall. Joining the throng, I soon gained an inner courtyard, to find what seemed to be half the population of Verona quarreling, pushing, and scratching in a struggle to reach the gate of a large wicket that shut off one end of the square. Behind it, just visible above the intervening sea of heads, appeared the top of some massive instrument, and the caps of a squad of policemen. I inquired of an excited neighbor the cause of the squabble. He glowered at me and howled something in reply, the only intelligible word of which was “pane” (bread). I turned to a man behind me. He took advantage of my movement to shove me aside and crowd into my place, at the same time vociferating “pane!” I tried to oust the usurper. He jabbed me twice in the ribs with his elbows, and again roared “pane.” In fact, everywhere above the howl and blare of the multitude, one word rang out clear and sharp—“pane! pane! pane!” Sad experiences of the day before, and the anticipation of the long miles of highway before me, had aroused my interest in that commodity. I dived into the human whirlpool and set out to battle my way towards the vortex.