The Tiber, at the Ponte Nomantana
From a photograph
about the Piazza Rotonda and along the Via di Ripetta, carrying bread to the people in the submerged houses. When the river receded, “came the famine, came the fever.” When I was in Rome for the first time, as a girl, I had a bad case of old-fashioned Roman fever. Since my return, I have seen Suora Gabriella, the dear nun who nursed me so faithfully (she really saved my life) through that long dreadful illness. In speaking of the character of the work done by the nursing sisterhood to which she belongs, she said, “Since there is no more fever, the character of our work has changed somewhat; we now take surgical cases!” The doctors and hotel-keepers claim that Rome is the second healthiest city in Europe, having the lowest death rate after London. If this is true, we owe it to Garibaldi, for he it was who urged the Romans to build the Tiber embankment,—their best monument to his memory.
October 25, 1898.
This morning, Maria, the porter’s wife, was announced. She had come on “ambasciata” from the wife of the wine merchant opposite. “You remember the poor little gobbetto (hunch-back), Signora? the one who has brought you so much luck, since that day when you rubbed his hump?”
“I remember him, yes; what of him?”
“He is very ill; he suffers much, cannot sleep, cannot eat. One sees all his bones! His mother, poor woman, prays that you will ask the American Marchesa who lives at the Palazzo Giraud Torlonia to lend her carriage for the transportation of the santo bambino (the holy child) from the church of Santa Maria in Aracieli, to her house.”
“But why does she want the santo bambino at her house?”