The parental allowance, a very modest one, was to be continued until he could earn his own living; but having inherited from a maternal relative a tiny property near Rome, he, as in duty bound, renounced the allowance in order that his sisters' doweries might be increased, and lived as Romans so well know how to live, decorously and comfortably, on a very small income. The "vigna" outside Porta San Giovanni was cultivated by peasants, whose family had tenanted it for some generations, on the mezzadria system, an equal division of profits with the owner. As hardly any taxes were levied in the Papal States, and no duty assessed on provisions passing the city gates, the full value of ownership and labor was reaped from the land, and the half-and-half arrangement, while equally distributing the losses of lean years, insured to both landlord and tenant the entire benefit of fat ones.
The lean years had been few in the garden vineyard outside the Lateran Gate; the vines flowered into heady fragrance in the divine Roman spring behind their tall hedges of canes and roses, and bore their splendid bunches nobly when the late summer rains came to swell, nearly to bursting, the tightly clustered fruit baked black on the brown stems whence every leaf had been stripped in August to let the sun and air do their magic work. Then came the crown of the year, the October vintage, when every little winepress poured its purple froth from under the bare feet of the treaders into the seething vat below; when the very air was wine, from Lombardy to Messina, and each Sunday of the glowing month brought the population of the city, in gay attire, out to eat and drink, to laugh and dance and make music, from dawn to dark, in the garden of the gods, the vinelands of Romagna.
Rinaldo went with the rest, inviting a chosen party of fellow-students to the vigna, where the padroncino was always delightedly welcomed and the best the house could afford brought out for him and his friends. The meal was served in the open air, by the fountain, under the brown thatch woven in between the branches of the four cypress-trees as a shelter from the sun; old songs and young laughter accompanied the repast; the new wine, cloudy and sweet still and of terrific headiness, was tasted, and healths drunk in the safer product of past years. Then a game of bowls was played, a substantial present made to the "vignarolo," and, in the cool of the evening, the "raggazzi" climbed, six at a time, into the small open carriage hired for the occasion, and were borne back to the town. The jolly driver, who had had his share of the day's good things, cracked his beribboned whip high over the heads of the little black horses, who, with roses on their ears and bows on their tails, frisked gaily along in a cloud of dust, running races with dozens of other vehicles full of noisy, happy people twanging guitars and shaking tamborines, very few of them at all the worse for the innocent orgy. At last came the scamper for the Lateran Gate before Ave Maria rang and it should be closed for the night, and the usually severe guardians only smiled at the merry scramble and closed the huge portals, regretfully when the last carrozzella had romped safely through.
Such holidays were the more enjoyed by Rinaldo because they were rare. In general he led a life as orderly and studious as that of Carlo Bianchi himself; but it was illuminated with hope for the future, with pleasure in the present in spite of the slow labor necessary, in spite of the many discouragements to be lived down before he could attain even modest proficiency in his kindly art. His chief relaxation in the summer time was provided by Father Tiber. The "Cannottieri" club had not been organized in those early days, but its forerunner, a river boating society, drew the young men together in the warm afternoons and gave them many a cool swim and invigorating hour of rowing on the full yellow tide. Rinaldo was a favorite with his compeers, but he never allowed their importunities to interfere with the great business of his life, success in his reasonable aims. He had gone through every step of the art student's course with sturdy conscientiousness, trusting nothing to inspiration, avoiding what he recognized as impressionism (the word itself had not been coined) as he avoided bad women and sour wine. He never imagined himself a genius; he was content to have talent and to cultivate it faithfully. Month after month he copied in the galleries, reverently tracing the perceptive lines of great masterpieces on his canvas and his memory. Constant work in the Life School filled the evening hours when the days were short, and humble acceptance of the master's sharp criticisms corrected any slightest tendency to conceit. With native shrewdness he had understood that there was always a market for good, unostentatious work, and he was not too proud to take commissions for copies when he could not sell his own really charming little pictures. For Rinaldo had an end in view, and he worked steadily towards it. Loneliness did not appeal to his cheerful nature; he meant to find a pretty, sweet-tempered wife as soon as he could support her, and to have a home as strongly foundationed as the one in Orbetello, of which he retained admiring and affectionate memories.
Having no fortune beyond the small income derived from the vigna, he could not expect to marry a girl with much of a dowry; in such matters a certain similarity of circumstances was the accepted rule. So he put by all that it was possible for him to save, resolved to marry while young and in love with life, and equally resolved to feel no pinch of poverty afterwards. His attitude was one not at all uncommon among his fellow-students and contemporaries; nothing could have been further from the happy-go-lucky Bohemianism of the foreign artistic coteries, Scandinavian, German, Anglo-Saxon, which swarmed in Rome at that time. There is but one calling which makes Bohemians of the sober-going yet light-hearted children of Latium, the musical one. What would you have? When a man is born with a voice that can sing the stars down from heaven and the angels from paradise, is it not to be expected that he should also be born drunk with celestial wine? When he can compose operas whose airs, after the first hearing, are sung in every alley of the city—as happened the morning after the production of the Trovatore—no one can demand that he should understand the intricacies of account books. It is the world's business to see to the daily wants of its Orpheuses and Apollos—and the world, as a rule, attends to the obligation nobly.
When Rinaldo took possession of his new studio he felt that he was marking an important point on the road of his ambitions. Hitherto he had shared the workshop of a friend, in the warren of studios which climb from the Via Babuino to the lower terraces of the Pincian Hill. Now, having sold some small pictures, and having secured through the dealer an order from a rich foreigner for a large one, he felt justified in assuming the responsibilities of quiet, airy quarters where he could work without interruptions. As he sat among his queer belongings—scattered over the floor in wild disorder—an unreasoning joy took possession of him, a certainty that he had found more in this new home than clean, bright rooms and a superb north light. He rose and walked about, exploring his new domain, and lingering on the little terrace to breathe in the breeze which, rioting over from the coast, twenty miles away, seemed to disdain ever to sink into the hot streets so far below.
His attention was called to material things by the protests of the inhabitant of the wicker cage, still wrapped in the yellow handkerchief. He took it up gently and in a moment liberated a splendid gray and purple pigeon, which hopped on his shoulder and began to preen its ruffled feathers with a deeply injured air. "My poor Themistocles," Rinaldo apologized, "I had forgotten all about you. And your grain is spilt and your cup is empty." Gravely he attended to the creature's wants, while it fluttered about, taking in all the possibilities of the place. Themistocles was accused by Rinaldo's friends of being a most uncanny bird, watching their actions with a sarcastic eye and understanding many things which did not come within his province at all. Though he was allowed to roam at will over the housetops he always returned to his master in the evening and generally slept on the head of the lay figure, the carefully swathed treasure which had so excited the curiosity of the denizens of the street of the cow.
Rinaldo had become so accustomed to this quaint feathered companion that he would have felt lonely without him; indeed Themistocles had been the recipient of many a confidence and ambition which his master would have betrayed to no articulate listener. One must talk to something about the things nearest one's heart, and it was fine to have a confidant who never objected or contradicted.
In an hour the properties were all in place. The little platform was set in the best light, and the ancient chair, topped with gilt cherubs and covered with ragged crimson velvet, was placed on it at the usual angle. How many cardinals, fair ladies, and swaggering bravos had sat in that chair during the last few years! Of each and all the corporeal body was supplied by the trusty lay figure, which, now liberated from its cerecloth, disclosed the amputation of one leg below the knee, the dislocation of the other, incurable paralysis of the fingers; a pink but blistered countenance, a nose injured by contact with a mahlstick hurled at it by Rinaldo's former studio companion; vacuous blue eyes and a set smile completed the model's attractions, and these were crowned by a damaged wig of a sickly yellow hue, much impoverished by the attentions of Themistocles, who was in the habit of tearing out locks of hair when playing at building a nest in the angle of the least-used easel. In a few minutes, however, the warworn veteran of the studio was sitting in the gilt chair, cleverly robed in the red tablecloth and impersonating a cardinal in full canonicals; a large canvas was brought out, the dear, bedaubed paint boxes opened, the favorite palette loaded with its daily rainbow of colors—and behold Rinaldo, forgetful of everything else, utterly happy, absorbed in his immortal work for the rich foreigner.
That evening he sat and smoked on his loggia, lifted far above the nightmare of fever which stalks in the lowlying streets on summer nights. He felt that he had come into a new world, where stars and sky were a part of the bargain. Going over to the balustrade he leaned out and looked down into the street—a chasm of blackness at that hour—then up at the violet dome of the heavens quivering with a thousand points of tender radiance, and, remembering his schooldays, softly quoted, "Donde uscimmo a riveder le stelle!"