“With respect, Nena has done right. I would neither have served on your table, nor allowed another to touch any food that black German had in her hands. What bad thing may she not have mixed with it?”
I suppose I looked annoyed at the thought of the good food wasted; they both eyed me judicially, but firmly.
“Remember, Madama, that you commanded me three times before I would take that blessed order to the Unione,” Nena urged. “I myself knew it was a waste of money to buy those groceries when the German was leaving so soon. You asked me the first time Monday, on the stairs; I told you that the shop shut early on account of a festa; you asked me again Tuesday, upon the terrace (you were potting the large acanthus at the time) if I had been to the Unione; I told you that my rheumatism was too bad for me to walk so far. You told me for the third time Wednesday, in this very room, in the presence of the Tedesca, to buy those things! I ask you, was it possible for me to longer disobey, especially as the Tedesca heard you give the order?”
Nena is perfectly honest in deed, if not in word; I would trust her with uncounted money. This was no comedy, such as they often play for my benefit; I felt the reality of it.
“What sort of bad thing do you mean? Poison?” I blurted out with the coarse Anglo-Saxon instinct of calling a spade a spade. Such brusqueness hurts the subtler Latin nature. “Signora! I make no charges. I would not say poison, no, but something that might make one very ill for a day or for an hour; how do I know?”
They got away as soon as they could; we have not spoken of the matter since. The next time I was at the Vatican I dropped into the Sala Borgia, and took a good look at the charming portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, by Pinturicchio, filled with a realizing sense that the Rome of the Borgias was not so far away from my Rome as I had formerly supposed.
It is hard for us to realize the deadly significance to an Italian of the suggestion that one may have the evil eye. I was walking one day with a young American girl to whom I had been unfolding some of the tragedies I have known connected with the superstition. She took it all lightly and joyously, after the manner of her kind; and later during our walk, when a saucy, tormenting beggar pursued us, she made the sign of the corni as I had described it to her, shaking the hand slightly, with the first and fourth finger extended. Then the beggar became convulsed with anger and seemed almost beside herself, shrieking out such a torrent of abuse that we were glad to jump into a cab and fly from the wrath to come. The poor creature was not to be blamed: she knew that once the shadow of suspicion falls, it means social excommunication, banishment outside the pale of whatever society one belongs to—a thing, like illness or death, as much to be dreaded by the pauper as by the Pope. Many people, by the way, believed that Pius IX had the evil eye, and made the sign of the corni behind hat or fan as they received his benediction in front of St. Peter’s. The Romans generally are not supposed to be as superstitious as the Neapolitans. In Naples most people wear, as a charm, a little hand of gold, coral, or mother of pearl, with the fingers in the attitude to avert evil. Even the horses wear horns upon their harnesses! Some of our Roman friends are not without faith in the efficacy of horns. One day, when my painter had occasion to go behind the big canvases in his studio, he found that an artist who had dropped in during his absence had drawn horns with a bit of charcoal all over the backs of his pictures. Later, when the work was finished and the Queen came to the studio to see it, the friend claimed some of the credit for the royal visit.
“You owe all your luck to my horns,” he said, half in fun, half in earnest.
June 24, 1899.
Last night was St. John’s eve. I gave Pompilia and Filomena a holiday, meaning to take the opportunity to get rid, with Nena’s aid, of some of the year’s accumulation of worn-out kitchen utensils. Pompilia is very obstinate about giving up such things; she must have had