Roundabout to Moscow: An Epicurean Journey

by John Bell Bouton

CHAPTER IX. FLORENCE—BOLOGNA—COMO.

Sunday, May 23d, being at Florence, we went to the Duomo. Advancing from the door to the center of that magnificent cathedral, we noticed a crowd of persons standing there, and heard a musical voice sounding above their heads. The edifice is so vast that the thousand or more people who composed the throng occupied comparatively only a small space on the floor. The voice, the source of which we could not trace at first in the dim light of the place, proved to come from a pulpit in mid-air. The speaker was a fine-looking man about fifty years old. His face was highly intellectual, and at moments intensely spiritual in its expression. He spoke Italian with a sweetness and a rhythmic swing delightful to the ear. One might not know a word of what he said—as at the Italian opera—and still enjoy hearing him. But it was not necessary to understand more than a few words—here and there—of the beautiful language that rolled so fluently from his lips in order to catch the full purport of his remarks. His theme was the consolations of religion in earthly sorrows. He spoke without manuscript or notes. The man’s heart was full of his message, and he delivered it with an eloquence that held his audience spell-bound. Officers and privates of the army, gray-headed civilians, rich men and beggars, women and children, all stood there with parted lips gazing upon his face and drinking in his words of faith and cheer. His gestures were few and natural. They seemed freighted with meaning. At times he would point up to the glorious dome, as if apostrophizing the angels and saints who make that great concave seem a glimpse of heaven. Then he would press his hand fervently upon his heart, as if to testify a sincerity for which no such gesture was needed, as truth and zeal shone before all men in every line of his face. Suddenly, while the attention of his hearers was rapt and almost painful in its intensity, he stopped, gave the congregation his blessing with a quick motion of his right hand (a sign of the cross), and abruptly left the pulpit. A moment later I saw him glide rapidly through the throng with a thick cloak wrapped about him, and a shawl tied around his neck. His impassioned sermon had heated him up, and he was very wisely taking care of himself. His name is unknown to me, and I may never see him again. But his eloquent discourse, which would have interpreted itself had it been spoken in Chinese, will ever remain one of my pleasantest recollections of the grand old Cathedral of Florence.

On the way back to my hotel I passed the Palazzo Vecchio. As I stopped to inspect its venerable front, a small boy handed me a printed slip of paper. Looking at it, I found it to be a recommendation of somebody with a long name for the office of delegate in the National Assembly. It was signed by numerous citizens of Florence, all highly respectable, probably, but strangers to me. Just before me I observed one man button-holing another, and whispering something in his ear. Groups of people were conferring mysteriously on every side. Then, for the first time, I noticed that the Palazzo Vecchio itself was plastered over with enormous placards of assorted colors—red, green, blue, white, and yellow. Letters a foot long proclaimed all these show-bills to be election posters, quite in the American style. They were all dated the night before the eventful day—namely, Sunday—which had been assigned for the great struggle between the friends and foes of the present Italian ministry. Politicians are the same in all countries. The cunning fellows in Italy understand as well as their American kind the art of issuing “last cards” and “final appeals” at an hour too late for refutation by their opponents.

Desiring to compare the Italian with the American process of balloting, I climbed to a large upper room in the palace where voting was then in progress. Admission was impossible without a permesso, which it was not worth while to procure, as I saw at a glance through the doorway how the business was done. A number of officials sat at a long table; upon it were glass globes for the ballots, and books for identifying and checking off the voters. The formalities were in substance the same as those which so effectually deter very busy men from voting in New York except in presidential years. With a population of 150,000, Florence is entitled to cast about 15,000 votes; and out of these the proportion of stay-at-homes is as large as in our own city. Very little interest was actually taken in the election, although the political journals had been trying for a week to “get up steam” with pictorial caricatures and big head-lines. The contest was evidently one between the ins and the outs, and the great majority of voters had no real concern in the issue. But the lesson was no less instructive to an American. All that I saw on that election Sunday in Florence convinced me that political tricks and “dodges” are by no means confined to our beloved country.

The tourist’s purse should be well stuffed if he wants to buy Florentine mosaics at the shops of the most famous manufacturers. The prices of some of their products would be called high even in New York. Extra fine pieces are ticketed at five thousand francs and upward. Some of the makers of mosaics have grown rich on American patronage. It is not at their shops that you get bargains. There is no shade of color, I believe, which the artist can not find among the stones, shells, or corals with which he produces his wonderful effects. As all great works of art require a master for their accomplishment, it stands to reason that the finest original landscapes, portraits, and flower and fruit pieces can never be very cheap, as most people estimate cheapness. But it is possible to pick up fairly good mosaics in Florence at reasonable rates, though these are not the rates asked by the seller. He does not expect you to give more than a half or two thirds his nominal price. I have visited a number of factories of fancy goods in Italy, and observed that nearly, all the labor is performed by mere children. They toil many hours in the day, and are poorly paid. Under the pretense that they are being educated to a trade, they continue for years to do a journeyman’s work, and it is to their cunning hands that we owe some of the most marvelous imitations of masterpieces in wood-carving, filigree, and mosaic. When, therefore, the manufacturer takes off a half or a third of his asking price, he is still making a large profit on his goods. No American need think that he can ever get the better of an art-dealer in Europe. That is impossible.

One of the most interesting sights in the environs of Florence is the Carthusian Monastery. I had the pleasure of visiting it with a party of American ladies. The monastery is an immense structure, covering acres of land, and contains ten or a dozen chapels of different sizes. This is enough to give each monk a chapel all to himself—the inmates not exceeding that number. For reasons best known to the Italian Government, it has been decided to wind up certain spiritual retreats, and this Carthusian Monastery among them. But the work is done gradually, and the buildings and grounds will not revert to the Government until the last of the few remaining monks is dead. They do not seem likely to die in a hurry. Some of them would take the prizes in any human exhibition for fatness and sleekness. Their loose and flowing robes of some cream-colored stuff, perhaps, impart an unreal fullness to their figures. One wonders if their lives are quite as austere as represented. The monk who piloted our party about is magnificent in physique. He stands about six feet two inches, as straight as an arrow, weighs fully two hundred pounds, has a winning, slightly sunburned Italian face, and is in manner a perfect gentleman. To the ladies he is at once dignified and courteous. Somewhere in some other days he must have mingled with refined society, and I catch myself in a state of keen surprise when I contrast his presumably monastic life here with the gay times that he may have had elsewhere. He is very fluent in Italian and French, as if he were making up (poor fellow!) for the enforced silence of his vows. For we are told that this ready talker is allowed to converse with his brethren no more than one hour in a week. We are shown his suite of small, miserable, cheerless rooms where he receives and eats his frugal meals, which are shoved to him through a hole in the wall by a hand attached to an unseen person. We see the wretched straw pallet on which he stretches his giant frame, and the bare table where he makes his solitary repast. Then we look again at his healthy face, and still wonder by what alchemy he can transmute his solitude and privation into apparent contentment and even happiness. The ladies all think that our handsome guide must “have a history.” They imagine that somewhere among his antecedents is the inevitable “woman.” They speculate fondly on the probabilities of some love-affair which drove our friend from a luxurious court to this penitential abode. They unanimously agree that it is “too bad” to keep such a fine-looking gentleman confined in a monastery, when society outside is pining for precisely that kind of material. But our monk makes no revelation of his own thoughts. After he has patiently taken us all over the monastery, and picked flowers for the ladies as mementos of their visit, he bids them good-by with the one unchanging expression of contentment on his face. May his ample shadow never be less, nor his beard of raven blackness be shorn of its luxuriant proportions!

Entering the ancient and famous city of Bologna May 24th, I could think only of the sausage that bears her name. The ideas of Bologna and sausage were one and inseparable. Could anything be more ridiculous? There was a large, rich, enterprising city, with her fine picture-galleries, churches, and important university, two remarkable leaning towers, and many branches of industry in which she excels. And yet I found myself looking out of the carriage-windows, right and left, for nothing but sausages! Not a single specimen of them could be seen between the station and the hotel. You may believe I was much disappointed. But at dinner, among a great variety of French dishes, the waiters bore around plates covered with the thinnest possible slices of the celebrated sausage. For a moment I hovered over it with a fork, and then gave myself the benefit of the doubt. All the Italians present scrambled for it, but the English people and at least two Americans at table let it alone. Such is prejudice. After dinner, walking about the shops near our hotel, I saw plenty of sausages. Indeed, these were the most beautiful ornaments of the shop-windows. Some were a foot in diameter, and their finely-cut surfaces looked like Roman mosaic. Aside from her sausages, Bologna is well worth a visit, and even those persons who are squeamish about eating them can not help admiring their decorative effect when exposed for sale in the busy parts of the city. Their artistic combinations of tint lighten up the shop-fronts like so many chromos or colored photographs.

Next day we examined the two leaning towers. One of them is particularly interesting, because it is claimed by some authorities to be the only tower in all Italy which leans “on purpose.” The taller of the pair deflects only about three and a half feet in a height of two hundred and seventy-two feet; while the other, with a height of only one hundred and thirty-eight feet, is eight and a half feet out of plumb. According to tradition, if not history, this obliquity is the work of design. One may suppose that the original intention was to carry the short tower to the same height as the tall one, and that the architect and the workmen became frightened as they proceeded. One feels like “standing from under” as he looks up and sees that massive chimney-like pile apparently on the point of toppling over with its own weight. I can understand, too, that the masons may have struck for higher wages or fewer hours as the tower began to lean more and more. It should have needed no trade-union or Knights of Labor to impel them to make a demand on their employers. To them as to us it must have seemed very absurd to build a tower at enormous expense for the express object of showing how much it could be made to lean without falling. After one has looked at these eccentric structures a short time he becomes the prey of a singular optical illusion. Every other campanile or steeple or chimney appears to be leaning more or less. The fronts of tall buildings do not seem to be exactly up and down. The spectator insensibly compares one upright object with another, and discovers, as he imagines, a variance of a yard, or a foot, or an inch, from the true perpendicular. He becomes painfully skeptical about the stability of all things, and does not get rid of this disagreeable impression until he leaves Bologna, and ceases to see the pair of leaning towers looming always above the horizon.

Taking one’s lunch on the upper deck of a Rhine steamer is very pleasant. The same operation is highly agreeable on a Danube boat. The picturesque scenery of both rivers is enjoyed all the more while the inner man is duly refreshed. But a lunch eaten in full air on the smart little craft that plies on the most beautiful of Italian lakes between Como and Bellagio is an experience no less delightful. The food and the wine are good, to begin with. If one comes up from Milan on a hot and dusty day, he revels in the coolness as he sits under an awning and is fanned by breezes that have swept over yonder snow-fields of the Alps. The hotter he has found Rome and Florence—and the more wearisome the great valley or prairie of the Po has seemed to him as he traversed it—the more he feasts on the prospect of mountains now all around him, and the promise of lower temperature which they do not hold out in vain. The hills which form the immediate frame of this exquisite lake are clothed to their tops in green—not barren on the summit like those of Southern Italy. This green is reflected in the clear, deep water, and perhaps of itself explains the fine aquamarine tint for which Como is as famous as Lake Leman for its matchless blue.