A curious thing about European decency is that it seems to be forced on people by law, and indulged in only for show. The Gallic nations are only veneered with decency. They have, almost to a man, none of it naturally, or for its own sake. Take, for example, the sidewalks of Paris after dark. The moment public surveillance wanes or the sun goes down the Frenchman becomes his own natural self.
The Neapolitan’s acceptation of dirt as a portion of his inheritance is irresistibly comic to a pagan outsider. To drive down the Via di Porto is to see a mimic world. All the shops empty themselves into the street. They leave only room for your cab to drive through the maze of stalls, booths, chairs, beds, and benches. At nightfall they light flaring torches, which, viewed from the top of the street, make the descent look like a witch scene from an opera.
It is the street of the very poor, but one is struck by the excellent diet of these same very poor. They eat as a staple roasted artichokes—a great delicacy with us. They cook macaroni with tomatoes in huge iron kettles over charcoal fires, and sell it by the plateful to their customers, often hauling it out of the kettles with their hands, like a sailor’s hornpipe, pinching off the macaroni if it lengthens too much, and blowing on their fingers to cool them. They have roasted chestnuts, fried fish, boiled eggs, and long loops of crisp Italian bread strung on a stake. There are scores of these booths in this street, the selling conducted generally by the father and grown sons, while the wife sits by knitting in the smoke and glare of the torches, screaming in peasant Italian to her neighbor across the way, commenting quite openly upon the people in the cabs, and wondering how much their hats cost. The bambinos are often hung upon pegs in the front of the house, where they look out of their little black, beady eyes like pappooses. I unhooked one of these babies once, and held it awhile. Its back and little feet were held tightly against a strip of board so that it was quite stiff from its feet to its shoulders. It did not seem to object or to be at all uncomfortable, and as it only howled while I was holding it I have an idea that, except when invaded by foreigners, the bambino’s existence is quite happy. Babies seem to be no trouble in Italy, and one cannot but be struck by the number of them. One can hardly remember seeing many French babies, for the reason that there are so few to remember—so few, indeed, that the French government has put a premium upon them; but in Naples the pretty mothers with their pretty babies, playing at bo-peep with each other like charming children, are some of the most delightful scenes in this fascinating Street of the Door.
These bambinos hooked against the wall look down upon curious scenes. Their mothers bring their wash-tubs into the street, wash the clothes in plain view of everybody, hang them on clothes-lines strung between two chairs, while a diminutive charcoal-stove, with half a dozen irons leaning against its sides, stands in the doorway ready to perform its part in the little scene. I saw a boy cooking two tiny smelts over a tailor’s goose. The handle was taken off, and the fish were frying so merrily over the glowing coals, and they looked so good, and the odor which steamed from them was so ravishing, that I wanted to ask him if I might not join him and help him cook two more.
In point of fact, Naples seems like a holiday town, with everybody merely playing at work, or resting from even that pretence. The Neapolitans are so essentially an out-of-door people and a leisurely people that it seems a crime to hurry. The very goats wandering aimlessly through the streets, nibbling around open doorways, add an element of imbecile helplessness to a childish people.
Did you ever examine a goat’s expression of face? For utter asininity a donkey cannot approach him. Nothing can, except, perhaps, an Irish farce-comedian.
Beautiful cows are driven through the streets, often attended by the owner’s family. The mother milks for the passing customers, the father fetches it all lovely and foaming and warm to your cab, and the pretty, big-eyed children caper around you, begging for a “macaroni” instead of a “pourboire.”
Then, instead of dining at your smart hotel, it is so much more adorable to drop in at some charming restaurant with tables set in the open air, and to hear the band play, and to eat all sorts of delicious unknowable dishes, and to drink a beautiful golden wine called “Lachrima Christi” (the tears of Christ), and to watch the people—the people—the people!
XIV
ROME
On Easter Sunday I had my first view of Rome, my first view of St. Peter’s. The day was as soft and mild as one of our own spring days, and there was even that little sharp tang in the air which one feels in the early spring in America. The wind was sweet and balmy, yet now and then it had a sharp edge to it as it cut around a curve, as if to remind one that the frost was not yet all out of the ground, and that the sun was still only the heir-apparent to the throne and had not yet been crowned king. It was the sort of day that one has at home a little later, when one still likes the feel of the fur around the neck, while the trees are still bare, when the eager spring wind brings a tingle to the blood and the smell of rich, black earth and early green springing things to the nostrils; when the eye is ravished with the sight of purple hyacinths thrusting their royal chalices up through the reluctant soil; when the sun-colored jonquil and the star-eyed narcissus lift their scented heads above the sombre ground, as if unconscious of the patches of snow here and there, forming one of the contradictions of life, but a contradiction always welcome, because it is in itself a promise of better things to come.