[2] ‘A vitalizia’ is an agreement by which persons pay a sum down and are taken in to board for the rest of their lives. [↑]
[3] ‘La Festa dei Morti,’ November 2. [↑]
[4] ‘Chè è ora dell’ orazione.’ I give this very quaint idea in the words in which it was told to me. [↑]
[5] ‘Era altro che un festino, il chiarore.’ The lighting up of a theatre for a public masqued ball would naturally be the highest impression of brightness for a poor man in Rome. ‘Altro che’ is his favourite word in the sense of ‘no comparison.’ ‘Altro!’ alone stands for ‘I should think so!’ ‘Isn’t it indeed!’ &c. [↑]
[6] Since the invasion of September 1870, Rome has been placarded with announcements of mediums who may be consulted on every possible occasion. I give the whole story as it was told me, but I have, of course, no means of knowing how the séance was conducted, and there is every likelihood the man would be so full of the strange occurrence that he would begin by letting out all on which he came to it to seek confirmation. The introduction of these mediums has been welcomed as supplying the means of gratifying that craving after the supernatural which was denied them under the former administration. ‘Witchcraft was forbidden by the former law, therefore we may suppose it was wrong,’ reason the less intelligent and those who wish to be deceived; ‘spiritismo is allowed by the law which rules us to-day, therefore we may suppose it is right;’ and thus we are beginning to see here what Cantù had written of other parts of Italy and Europe: ‘But who will feel the courage to contemn the follies of another age when he sees the absurd credulity of our own, which upon similar manifestations founds other theories.... Recent writers on the subject (see in particular, Allan Kardec, ‘Le Spiritisme à sa plus simple expression,’ ‘Le Livre des esprits,’ &c.), themselves acknowledge that the oracles and pythonesses of old, and the genii, sorcerers, and magicians of later ages, were the predecessors of these mediums. We have therefore come back to that which we ridicule in our ancestors.’ [↑]
THE WHITE SERPENT.[1]
My story is also of a husband and wife, but they were peasants, and lived outside the gates.
‘It is so cold to-night,’ said the husband to the wife, as they went to bed, ‘we shall freeze if we have another night like it. We must contrive to wake before it is light, and go and get some wood somewhere before we go to work, to make a fire to-morrow night.’