When, after many weary years of wedlock, the death of the old appaltatore left her at liberty to form less irksome ties, the choice of the buxom and well-endowed widow, amidst a crowd of aspirants, fell upon the Marchese Alessandro Marziani, a young noble of Macerata, several years her junior, and with apparently little but his good looks and old name to recommend him. To universal surprise, the marriage proved on the whole a happy one. The marchese looked on his wife as a model of genius and wit; never questioned her opinions, though careful to avoid compromising himself by uttering any of his own; and grateful for the support she furnished to the declining fortunes of his house, and the grace with which she consented to reside several months of each year with his family—thus enabling him to pay that dutiful attention to his father's old age which Italians are so solicitous to discharge—showed her a respect and esteem which amply atoned for the absence of shining qualities in himself.
In one of the visits to Ancona, whither a natural desire for change used occasionally to lead her, I made the marchesa's acquaintance; and, through the same seeking for variety, she was doubtless prompted to the novel experiment of introducing the Signorina forestiera into the heart of her husband's family, moulded after the most approved fashion of ancient Italian households.
Macerata is about forty miles distant from Ancona, on the high-road to Rome, finely situated on the loftiest point of a ridge of hills running midway between the sea and the grand chain of Apennines which form the noble background to most Italian scenery. Even at that early period of the year the country through which we passed was remarkable for its beauty and fertility; but the marchesa talked too much and too energetically to permit me to observe anything in detail; so that it was fortunate I was enabled some months later again to see and thoroughly enjoy what the natives, with pardonable pride, designate as “the Garden of Italy.”
We travelled in the marchesa's carriage, a party of four, or rather five; for, in addition to her, her good-humoured spouse, and myself—the three padroni—there was the cameriera, whom they would have thought it most inhuman to have seated on the outside, and the parrot. This last occupied a great circular tin cage, and wore a dejected aspect, which perhaps arose from jealousy at his mistress engrossing the whole of the conversation, though the marchese attributed it to indisposition, and vainly strove to cheer him by proffering cakes and sugar, or his own finger to be pecked at, thus beguiling the tediousness of the well-known road; while his wife, charmed at having a new listener, held forth about the abuses of the Government, the frauds of Cardinal Antonelli, the weakness of the Pope, and the insolence of the Austrians, requiring nothing beyond a shrug of the shoulders, or an affirmative groan, when she appealed to her husband to corroborate her statements. Every hour, at least, there was a stoppage at the foot of some hill, while cows or oxen were summoned from the nearest peasant's house to assist the horses in dragging us up these ascents, which for steepness exceed everything that can be imagined, except indeed the corresponding precipitousness of the declivity on the other side.
With this single drawback, the journey was very pleasant. We dined at Recanati, a very small but ancient town, crowning an eminence, like most of the cities in this country, which were built at a period when a position from whence a good view could be obtained of any advancing foe was an indispensable requisite for security; and here the parrot so far recovered his spirits, that the whole inn was thrown into ecstasy with his performances, which the marchesa, from being seriously occupied with partaking of needful refreshment, allowed him to exhibit without a competitor. The sala in which we took our repast was crowded with an admiring audience, the beggars who infested the courtyard and stairs having also crept in unreproved; and their comments and exclamations at every fresh proof of the pappagallo's loquacity seemed to afford unqualified pleasure to his owners, without any thought of offended dignity at the intrusion—such as would have disturbed the equanimity, and spoiled the digestion of British travellers—ever entering their minds.
It was night when we arrived at the Palazzo Marziani—a handsome pile of building, of a massive style of architecture, faced with large square slabs of marble, like the old Florentine palaces, wide balconies projecting from the windows, and a grand portico, surmounted by armorial bearings in alto rilievo, through which the carriage passed into a court that in olden time had evidently been surrounded by an open arcade, with a fountain in the centre. The interstices between the columns, however, as a daylight view revealed, had been filled up with brickwork; the fountain no longer played; and the grass sprouted up in tufts between the pavement, or waved in rank luxuriance amid the rich cornices of the façade.
On one side of this piazza were the stables—perceptible, alas! to other senses besides the ocular—and on the opposite one rose the staircase, in broad and easy flights, with marble busts of various ancestors of the family in niches upon each landing. The apartments of the marchesa, as wife of the eldest son, were upon the first floor, and thither were we lighted, with great jubilee and welcome, by an old white-headed man in plain clothes—the maestro di casa, whose real name had merged into that of Rococo—and one or two subordinates in livery-coats of faded blue and yellow, just like the lackeys who come forward upon the stage in Italian theatres to carry away the moss-grown seat upon which the rustic primadonna has been reclining.
The second brother, the Marchese Oliverotto Marziani, whose patronymic was a superfluity, inasmuch as I never heard him addressed by it;—his wife, the Marchesa Silvia, a quiet little body, with two or three children clinging to her side, the proprietorship of whom alone enabled her to make head against the overwhelming supremacy of her sister-in-law Gentilina;—the Marchesina Volunnia, the eldest daughter, unmarried, and with a great reputation for learning;—and, finally, a very old man, with a quavering voice and infirm gait, appeared to greet our arrival.
The brothers, both tall and handsome, fine specimens of the manly style of beauty of which this part of Italy retains the distinctive type, loudly kissed and brushed their black beards against each other with great affection, while the ladies embraced with clamorous demonstrations, but little warmth; and then, on the approach of his father, Alessandro, hastening to meet him, bent over his hand, and raised it to his lips with an air of unaffected tenderness and respect. These salutations over, they all paid their compliments to the new-comer with great politeness, eyeing me all the time with very allowable curiosity, for I am sure it was the first occasion on which a foreigner and a heretic had ever come thus familiarly amongst them.
After this, supper being announced, we all betook ourselves to that meal, descending the grand cold staircase, already described, to the eating-room, which was on the ground-floor, in the vicinity of the kitchen, and not particularly remote from the stable. We were here joined by a priest, Don Ciriaco, who lived in the house as a sort of secretary and companion to the old marchese or papà, as they all called him, and imparted the rudiments of Latin and the Catechism to the children. He was evidently in a very servile position, being treated with perfect indifference by all assembled, except the Marchesa Silvia, who now and then addressed to him a few words, though always with an implied and unquestioned sense of his inferiority, which reminded me of Macaulay's delineation of the footing of domestic chaplains in England at the close of the seventeenth century. Two of the children sat up to supper, one on each side of their mother, muffled in huge napkins tied round their chins, and completely engrossing her attention by the cutting up and preparing of their food.