A long, narrow valley, with precipitous sides, commences directly at the gate of Trieste, and follows a small stream into the mountains of Friuli. It is a very sweet, green place, and studded on both sides with cottages and kitchen-gardens, which supply the city with flowers and vegetables. The right hand slope is called the Boschetto, and is laid out with pretty avenues of beech and elm as a public walk, while, at every few steps, stands a bowling-alley or drinking arbour, and here and there a trim little restaurant, just large enough for a rural party. It is perhaps a mile and a half in length, and one grand café in the centre, usually tempts the better class of promenaders into the expense of an ice.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and all Trieste was pouring out to the Boschetto. I had come ashore with one of the officers, and we fell into the tide. Few spots in the world are so variously peopled as this thriving seaport, and we encountered every style of dress and feature. The greater part were Jewesses. How instantly the most common observer distinguishes them in a crowd! The clear sallow skin, the sharp black eye and broad eyebrow, the aquiline nose, the small person, the slow, cautious step of the old, and the quick, restless one of the young, the ambitious ornaments, and the look of cunning, which nothing but the highest degree of education does away, mark the race with the definiteness of another species.
We strolled on to the end of the walk, amused constantly with the family groups sitting under the trees with their simple repast of a fritata and a mug of beer, perfectly unconscious of the presence of the crowd. There was something pastoral and contented in the scene that took my fancy. Almost all the female promenaders were without bonnets, and the mixture of the Greek style of head-dress with the Parisian coiffure, had a charming effect. There was just enough of fashion to take off the vulgarity.
We coquetted along, smiled upon by here and there a group that had visited the ship, and on our return sat down at a table in front of the café, surrounded by some hundreds of people of all classes, conversing and eating ices. I thought as I glanced about me, how oddly such a scene would look in America. In the broad part of an open walk, the whole town passing and repassing, sat elegantly dressed ladies, with their husbands or lovers, mothers with their daughters, and occasionally a group of modest girls alone, eating or drinking with as little embarrassment as at home, and preserving toward each other that courtesy of deportment which in these classes of society can result only from being so much in public.
Under the next tree to us sat an excessively pretty woman with two gentlemen, probably her husband and cavalier. I touched my hat to them as we seated ourselves, and this common courtesy of the country was returned with smiles that put us instantly upon the footing of a half acquaintance. A caress to the lady’s greyhound, and an apology for smoking, produced a little conversation, and when they rose to leave us, the compliments of the evening were exchanged with a cordiality that in America would scarce follow an acquaintance of months. I mention it as an every-day instance of the kind-hearted and open manners of Europe. It is what makes these countries so agreeable to the stranger and the traveller. Every café, on a second visit, seems like a home.
We were at a rural fête last night, given by a wealthy merchant of Trieste, at his villa in the neighbourhood. We found the company assembled on a terraced observatory, crowning a summer-house, watching the sunset over one of the sweetest landscapes in the world. We were at the head of a valley, broken at the edge of the Adriatic by the city, and beyond spread the golden waters of the gulf toward Venice, headed in on the right by the long chain of the Friuli. The country around was green and fertile, and small white villas peeped out everywhere from the foliage, evidences of the prosperous commerce of the town. We watched the warm colours out of the sky, and the party having by this time assembled, we walked through the long gardens to a house open with long windows from the ceiling to the floor, and furnished only with the light and luxurious arrangement of summer.
Music is the life of all amusement within the reach of Italy, and the waltzing was mingled with performances on the piano (and very wonderful ones to me) by an Italian count and his friend, a German. They played duets in a style I have seldom heard even by professors.
The supper was fantastically rural. The table was spread under a large tree, from the branches of which was trailed a vine, by a square frame of lattice-work in the proportions of a pretty saloon. The lamps were hung in coloured lanterns among the branches, and the trunk of the tree passed through the centre of the table hollowed to receive it. The supper was sumptuously splendid, and the effect of the party within, seen from the grounds about, through the arched and vine-concealed doors, was the most picturesque imaginable.