Late in the evening we paid our bill, and gave presents to the servants, usually a disagreeable and thankless proceeding. But here, all was so fair, the people so pleased and apparently attached, that no feelings of annoyance were excited. Poor people! I hope to see them one day again—they all gathered round us with such shows of regret that it was impossible not to feel very kindly towards them in return.
Good-night!
LETTER X.
Voyage to Lecco.—Bergamo.—The Opera of “Mosè.”—Milan.
Bergamo, 10th Sept.
For the sake of visiting scenes unknown to us, we arranged not to go by the steamer from Como to Milan, but hired one of the large boats of the place to take us to Lecco. We quitted Cadenabbia yesterday at five in the morning. Sadly I bade adieu to its romantic shores and the calm retirement I had there enjoyed. The mountains reared their majestic sides in the clear morning air, and their summits grew bright, visited by the sun’s rays. We doubled the promontory of Bellaggio, and quickly passing the picturesque rocks beneath the gardens of the Villa Serbelloni, we found that the lake soon lost much of its picturesque beauty. Manzoni and Grossi have both chosen this branch of the lake for the scene of their romances; but it is certainly far, very far, inferior to the branch leading to Como, especially as at the end of the lake you approach the flat lands of Lombardy and the bed of the Adda. We breakfasted comfortably at Lecco, and hired a calèche for Bergamo. It was a pleasant but warm drive. Oh, how loth will the Austrian ever be to loosen his gripe of this fair province, fertile and abounding in its produce,—its hills adorned with many villages, and sparkling with villas. These numerous country-houses are the peculiarity and beauty of the region: as is the neighbourhood of Florence, so are all these hills, which form steps between the Alps and the Plains of Lombardy, rendered gay by numerous villas, each surrounded by its grounds planted with trees, among which the spires of the cypress rise in dark majesty. The fields were in their best dress; the grapes ripening in the sun; the Indian corn—the second crop of this land of plenty—full-grown, but not quite ripe.
Variety of scene is so congenial, that the first effect of changing the mountain-surrounded, solitary lake for the view of plain and village, and wide-spread landscape, raised my spirits to a very springtide of enjoyment. We were very merry as we drove along.
There is a fair at Bergamo; it has lasted three weeks, and the great bustle is over. We had been told that the inns are bad; I do not know whether we have found admission into the best, but I know we could scarcely anywhere find a worse. The look of the whole house is neglected and squalid; the bedrooms are bare and desolate, and a loathly reptile has been found on their walls. The waiters are unwashed, uncouth animals, reminding one of a sort of human being to be met in the streets of London or Paris—looking as if they never washed nor ever took off their clothes; as if even the knowledge of such blessings were strangers to them. The dinner is uneatable from garlic. Of course, the bill to-morrow morning will be unconscionably high.
We have come to Bergamo chiefly for the sake of the opera, and to hear Marini, a basso—boasted of as next to Lablache—but, though fine, the distance is wide between. Being fatigued, I did not go to the upper town to see the view, which is extensive, and at the setting of the sun peculiarly grand. But to the opera we went. The house is large and handsome; but the draperies and ornaments of the boxes were heavy and cumbersome; they carried, too, the usual Italian custom of having little light in their theatres, except on the stage, to such an excess, that we were nearly in the dark, and could not read our libretto. The opera was the Mosè. That which is pious to a Catholic is blasphemous to a Protestant, and the Mosè is changed, when represented in England, to Pietro l’Eremita. None of the singers were good except Marini; but the music is the best of Rossini, and we appreciated this admirable master the more for having been of late confined to Donizetti. The quartetto of Mi manca la voce is perhaps his chef-d’œuvre. The way in which the voices fall in, one after the other, attracts, then fixes the attention. I listen breathlessly; a sort of holy awe thrills through the notes; the soul absorbs the sounds, till the theatre disappears; and the imagination, deeply moved, builds up a fitter scene—the fear, the darkness, the tremor, become real. The whole opera is rich in impressive and even sublime vocal effects. In the ballet we had Cerito—her first appearance at Bergamo—and she was received most warmly. She danced three pas, and after each she was called on seven times. I had not seen her before; and, though not comparable to Taglioni for an inexpressible something which renders her single in the poetry of the art, Cerito is light, graceful, sylphlike, and very pretty.
Milan, 11th.
This day has taken us to Milan, a long and rather dreary drive. We turned our backs on the hills, and proceeded through the low country round the capital of Lombardy, which is indeed the centre of a plain, whose shortest radius is twenty-five miles. The road is shut in by deep trenches, which serve as drains, and is lined by vines, trellised to pollard trees. We felt shut in by them, and unable to gain a glimpse of the mountains we had left to the north. Our drive was uninteresting, and grew very tiresome, till at last we arrive, and find rest and comfort, at the Hôtel de la Ville, an extensive hotel, kept by a Swiss, with a pretty English wife, and very comfortable in all its arrangements.