SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.
CHAPTER VI.
BIANCA’S FESTA.
Bianca’s birthday coming, they celebrated it by a little trip into the country. It was getting late for excursions, the weather being hot even for the last of May. But on the day before the proposed journey a few ragged clouds, scudding now and then across the sky, promised refreshment. Clouds never come to Rome for nothing; even the smallest fugitive mist is a herald; and the family, therefore, looked anxiously to see if they were to be kept at home the next day—if the herald announced a royal progress, short and splendid, or a long siege of rainy days.
They were sauntering, late in the afternoon, through a street of the Suburra, on one of those aimless walks that hit the mark of pleasure far oftener than planned pleasure-seeking does, and, seeing at their left a steep grade that ended in a stair climbing through light and shadow up the hillside, and going out under a dark arch into the light again, they followed it without asking questions, and presently found themselves in a quiet piazza surrounded by churches and convents as silent and, apparently, uninhabited as a desert. The most living thing was a single lofty palm-tree that leaned out against the sky. A wall hid the base of it, where one would not have been surprised to have found a lion sleeping.
Entering the portico of the nearest
church, they saw what might have been taken for two ancient, mossy statues, seated one at either side of the door, one representing a man as ragged and gray as Rip Van Winkle after his nap, the other a woman well fitted to be his companion. The statues stirred, however, at the sound of steps, extended their withered hands, and commenced a sort of gabbling appeal, in which nothing was distinguishable but the inevitable qualche cosa.