Amongst the few remaining of the popular diversions that used to be permitted in Carnival are the public tombole or raffles, held on Sundays and Feste in the principal square of the town, to which the lowest of the people eagerly resort. No drunkenness or fighting is ever seen, although, amongst that vast crowd of priests, peasants, Jews, young caffè-loungers, shopkeepers and their wives, grisettes and gendarmes, at least one or two thousand of the very dregs of the population are assembled, all intent upon the game, which is nearly allied to one I remember as a child, called Lotto, which we used to play at for sugar-plums.
On the balcony of the government palace, in a conspicuous position, is placed a wheel containing the numbers, ranging from one to ninety, which are drawn from it by a child blindfolded, and proclaimed aloud as they successively appear. The players, on paying eleven bajocchi—5-½d.—are each furnished with a card containing three rows of figures variously transposed, so that no two cards are alike. Whoever has a corresponding number on his card to the one called out, marks it; and he who first can boast of an unbroken row of five numbers thus filled up, is the winner, and shouts out “Tombola fatta!” in a voice that makes the welkin ring, and flings his hat, if he be so fortunate as to possess one, into the air.
I do not believe the amount of the prize depends on the number of persons engaged in the game; the value of the tombola to be played for is always known beforehand; some are of fifty, a hundred, or even more dollars, and the fascination of this pastime for the populace may therefore easily be imagined. Those who are too poor to afford the outlay necessary for a card, go into partnership with others, and often four or five are jointly interested in the purchase.
The scene during the drawing of the numbers is very picturesque, and is well set off by the old piazza, with its quaint irregular buildings, leading at the upper end by a semicircular ascent to the church of the Dominicans, in front of which is stationed the colossal statue of one of the popes—Clement XII., I think—in his pontifical robes and triple crown, forming the centre of a group of market-women, seated beside the baskets of fruit and vegetables they daily bring hither for sale. A little further down the Austrian band is stationed: it has been playing before the commencement of the game as only Austrian military bands can play; and the intoxicating strains have wrought still higher the general expectation and ferment. Every balcony and window are tenanted by anxious players and lookers-on, for gentle and simple are equally ardent and absorbed; while the whole space beneath is filled up by the eager, clamorous crowd, watching their own or their neighbour's progress, as if life and death were staked on the result.
Handsome peasant-girls in gay holiday attire, saturnine, calculating priests, laughing milliners' apprentices, sturdy fishermen, tattered women, beggars in every stage of misery—here are groups that a painter would long to delineate, for, discernible upon all, stamped as if with nature's signet, is the impress of beauty and of race.
The clear wintry sun shines on those upturned heads, and the blue unclouded sky forms a brilliant background to features of so much fire and animation, such coal-black kindling eyes, and figures of so much artistic outline and perfection, that the very originals of some of Raphael's master-pieces seem again presented to our view, and we recognise faces whose lineaments are familiar to us in the Sacrifice at Lystra, or the Preaching at Athens.
As the game wears on, when nearly ninety numbers have been called out, and the result yet remains undecided, the thrill of agitation preceding each successive, announcement,—the sudden silence, as if every one held his breath to catch the first sound on which his fate might hang,—is very remarkable and suggestive.
It is a grand spectacle of gambling, openly countenanced, nay more, encouraged by the Government, which sees not that in thus feeding the love of hazard and thirst for excitement in its subjects, it is but arming them with weapons that sooner or later will be employed to its own destruction.
But in their short-sighted policy, the Roman rulers discern nought but the expediency of furnishing the people with amusement, and turning their thoughts from politics. And when the diversions of the afternoon are ended, when the crowd disperses, as only an Italian crowd can disperse, without shrieks, or jostling, or rough-usage, while a murmur of animated voices diffuses itself through the streets,—no watchful eye seems to penetrate through this fair surface, no warning voice denounces what poison lurks in the anodyne which has been administered that day.