"I see what you mean, poppa," I said. "There's too much equality in Paris, isn't there—to be interesting," but the Senator was too deeply engaged in getting out momma's smelling salts to corroborate this interpretation.
It is a very long way to Genoa if you don't stop at Aix-les-Bains or anywhere—twenty-four hours—but Mont Cenis occurs in the night, which is suitable in a tunnel. There came a chill through the darkness that struck to one's very marrow, and we all rose with one accord and groped about for more rugs. When broad daylight came it was Savoy, and we realised what we had been through. The Senator was inclined to deplore missing the realisation of the Mont Cenis, and it was only when momma said it was a pity he hadn't taken a train that would have brought us through in the daytime and enabled him to examine it, that he ceased to express regret. My parents are often vehicles of philosophy for each other.
Besides, in the course of the morning the Senator acknowledged that he got more tunnels than he had any idea he had paid for. They came with a precipitancy that interfered immensely with any connected idea of the scenery, though momma, in my interest, did her best to form one. "Note, my love," she said, as we began to penetrate the frontier country, "that majestic blue summit on the horizon to the left"—obliteration, and another tunnel! "Don't miss that jagged line of snows just beyond the back of poppa's head, dear one. Quick! they are melting away!"—but the next tunnel was quicker. "Put down that the dazzling purity of these lovely peaks must be realised, for it cannot be"—darkness, and the blight of another tunnel. It was very hard on momma's imagination, and she finally accepted the Senator's warning that it would be thrown completely out of gear if she went on, and abandoned the attempt to form complete sentences between tunnels. It was much simpler to exclaim "Splendid!" or "Glorious!" which one could generally do without being interrupted.
We were not prepared to enjoy anything when we arrived at Genoa, but there was Christopher Columbus in bronze, just outside the station in a little place by himself, and we felt bound to give him our attention before we went any further. He was patting America on the head, both of them life size, and carrying on that historical argument with his sailors in bas-relief below; and he looked a very fine character. As poppa said, he was just the man you would pick out to discover America. The Senator also remarked that you could see from the position of the statue, right there in full view of the travelling public, that the Genoese thought a lot of Columbus; relied upon him, in fact, as their biggest attraction. Momma examined him from the carriage. She said it was most gratifying to see him there in his own home, so to speak; but her enthusiasm did not induce her to get out. Momma's patriotism has always to be considered in connection with the state of her nerves.
The state of all our nerves was healed in a quarter of an hour. The Senator showed his coupons somewhat truculently, but they were received as things of price with disarming bows and real gladness. We were led through rambling passages into lofty white chambers, with marble floors and iron bedsteads, full of simplicity and cleanliness, where we removed all recollections of Paris without being obliged to consider a stuffy carpet or satin-covered furniture. Italy, in the persons of the portier and the chambermaid, laid hold of us with intelligible smiles, and we were charmed. Inside, the place was full of long free lines and cool polished surfaces, and pleasant curves. Outside, a thick-fronded palm swayed in the evening wind against a climbing hill of many-tinted, many-windowed houses, in all the soft colours we knew of before. When the portier addressed momma as "Signora" her cup of bliss ran over, and she made up her mind that she felt able, after all, to go down to dinner.
Remembering their sentiments, we bowed as slightly as possible when we saw the Miss Binghams across the table, and the Senator threw that into his voice, as he inquired how they liked la belle Italie so far, and whether they had had any trouble with their trunks coming in, which might have given them to understand that his politeness was very perfunctory. If they perceived it, they allowed it to influence them the other way, however. They asked, almost as cordially as if we were middle-class English people, whether we had actually survived that trip to Versailles, and forbore to comment when we said we had enjoyed it, beyond saying that if there was one enviable thing it was the American capacity for pleasure. Yet one could see quite plainly that the vacuum caused by the absence of the American capacity for pleasure was filled in their case by something very superior to it.
"This city new to you?" asked the Senator as the meal progressed.
"In a sense, yes," replied Miss Nancy Bingham.
"We've never studied it before," said Miss Cora.
"I suppose it has a fascination all its own," remarked momma.