“Bene! Va!” An official hand pushed me unceremoniously towards the teller. I dropped ten soldi, gathered up my bread, and departed by the further wicket-gate down a flagstone alley.
Let him who has not tried it take my word that to carry two pounds of edible baseballs in his arms is no simple task. A loaf rolled in the gutter before I had advanced a dozen paces. The others squirmed waywardly in my grasp. With both hands amply occupied, I was reduced to the indignity of squatting on the pavement to fill my pockets, and even then a witless observer would have taken me for an itinerant juggler. Never since leaving Detroit had I posed as a philanthropist, but the burden of bread called for drastic measures; I must either be charitable or wasteful.
He who longs to give alms in Italy has not far to look for a recipient of his benefaction. I glanced down the passageway, and my eyes fell on a beggar of forlornly mournful aspect crouched in a gloomy doorway. With a benignant smile I bestowed upon him enough of my load with which to play the American national game among his confrères until the season closed. The outcast wore a sign marked, “Deaf and dumb.” Either he had picked up the wrong placard in sallying forth, or had been startled out of his rôle by the munificence of the gift. For as long as a screeching voice could reach me I was deluged with more blessings, to be delivered by the Virgin Mary; Her Son; every pope, past, present, or to come; or any saint, dead, living, or unborn, who had a few stray ones about him; than I could possibly have found use for.
I plodded on towards Vincenza. All that day the hard-earned loaves, which I dissolved in a glass of wine at village inns, aroused the envy of pessimistic groups gathered to curse the strike in general and that of the bakers in particular.
When morning broke again I summoned courage to test the third-class accommodations of Italy, and took train from Vincenza to Padua. At least, the ticket I purchased bore those two names, though the company hardly lived up to the printed contract thereon. We started from somewhere off in the woods to the west of Vincenza and, at the end of several hours of jolting and bumping, not excused, certainly, by the speed of the train, were set down in the center of a wheat field, which the guards informed us, in blatant voices, was Padua. I had a faint recollection of having heard somewhere that Padua boasted buildings and streets, like other cities. It was possible, of course, that the source of my information had been untrustworthy; I am nothing if not gullible. But fixed impressions are not easily effaced, and I wandered out through the sequestered station to whisper my absurd delusion to the first passerby.
“Padova!” he snorted, “Ma! Di siguro! Certainly this is Padua! Follow this road for a kilometer. Just before you come in sight of a whitewashed pig-sty turn to the left, walk sempre dritt’, and the city cannot escape you.”
I set out with the inner sense of having been “done” by the railway company, but the good man’s directions proved accurate and brought me in due time to the city gate.
The Italian stammers two excuses for this enchanting custom of banishing his stations to the surrounding meadows. If the city admitted railways within her walls—and every town larger than a community of goat-herds is walled—how could the officials of the octroi collect the duty on a cabbage hidden in the fireman’s tool-box? Or in case of foreign invasion! A regiment of Austrians ensconced under the benches of the third-class coach might, if they survived the journey, butcher the entire population before their presence was suspected. Besides, who could live in peace and contentment knowing that the sacred intermural precincts might at any moment be deluged with a train-load of cackling, beBaedekered tour—But no, now I think of it, my informant offered only two apologies.
Those who are victims of insomnia should journey to Padua. There may be in the length and breadth of Europe another community as conducive to sleep, but it has thus far escaped discovery. The sun is undoubtedly hot in Italy during the summer months. There runs a proverb in the peninsula to the effect that only fools and the English—which of course, includes Americans—venture forth near noonday without at least the protection of a parasol. But having suffered no evil effects during weeks of tramping in the country with only a cap on my head, I, for one, should hesitate to charge entirely to climatic conditions the torpor of the Padovans.
At any rate the city was lost in slumber. The few horses dragged their vehicles at a snail’s pace; the drivers nodded on their seats; those few shopkeepers who had not put up their shutters and retired to the bosom of their families could with difficulty be aroused from their siestas to minister to the wants of yawning customers. The very dogs slept in the gutters or under the chairs of their torpescent masters, and, to judge from many a building that was crumbling away and falling asleep like the inhabitants, this Morpheusatic tendency was no temporary characteristic.