While this repast is preparing, we are driven to occupy ourselves with a study of the room and the guests. The former presents a strange mixture of primitiveness and pretension: the build is clumsy, the window-shutters cover only the glass panes, the fittings are rude, the floor is bare. But the walls have been painted in (millions-of-miles-off) imitation of Raphael's much-sinned-against Loggie! And over the mantelpiece hangs a landscape, into which a piece of looking-glass is inserted to represent a lake. The principal piece of furniture is a large glass cupboard, in which is stowed away—we know not for what grand occasion, for it is not even brought into use to-day—a set of common English willow-pattern earthenware! We cannot but smile to see our humble friend in such grand plight; and we moralize to ourselves on the subjectivity of the human mind, to which its changed estimation testifies. The angularity of the fall of the table-cloth "accuses" a table composed of a literal "board," supported on tressels; and though there are a few chairs, the majority of the guests have to be content with backless benches. At one end of our board an English artist, not unknown to fame, and his party are going through the regular routine of an Italian hotel dinner with praiseworthy patience. At another board sits a large family of natives, and we forget all note of time as we watch with astonished eyes the masses of pasta they contrive to stow away, half-cooked as it is sure to be. The sight is not new to us, but every time we see it it has the same attraction, derived from the reminiscence of a delicious early surprise such as the performance of Punch and Judy always exercises on any number of Londoners. A vacant space near them is soon filled by another native, a young exquisite, who appears quite oppressed by the mild heat we northerners had been enjoying. Throwing himself at full length on the bench, he commences a violent fanning with his handkerchief; but after a minute or two his hand requires a cooler instrument, and he changes it for his hat, which in turn is exchanged for his dinner-napkin, and, finally, he completes the operation with his plate! At last the one-sentence-of-French waiter directs his steps toward our party, but, to the indignation of every individual of it, he bears the minestra we forbade him to name. This has been our universal experience. The Italian mind cannot take in the idea of the possibility of dining without broth; it is useless to countermand it, it is sure to be sent to table. We explode, nevertheless, and desire the dishes we ordered to be brought without further delay. "Aspetti oon petti momenti," says Nicolò; [{611}] and better than, his word this time, it is really only un petit moment before we are duly served.
Dinner despatched, we have still time to stroll over the neighborhood before we are wanted at Genzano. A walk of less than a mile, starting over the magnificent new viaduct, takes us to the straggling paese (we cannot bring ourselves to call it a town) of Albano. A good-natured old fellow, always recognizable by the extreme whiteness of his stockings, hails us as we pass, in memory of old acquaintance, and is sure we must want donkeys; we cannot refuse him, and hoping Master Pietro won't see us out of his stable window, we suffer the sure-footed but ignoble substitutes to take us down the difficult descent which the viaduct was built to spare us—so wayward is woman! But the viaduct itself has created a reason for making the descent, as the sight of its noble proportions amply repays the journey.
It was completed during the reign of the present Pope, from the designs of a local engineer—one of the Jacobini family. It is formed of "arches on arches" in three ranges, six on the lowest tier, twelve in the next, and eighteen in the highest; they are each forty-nine feet wide between the piers, and sixty feet in height; the whole length of roadway, including the approaches, is nearly a quarter of a mile, and the height to top of parapet just two hundred feet. It is built of massive blocks of peperino, cut to fit each other without mortar, and the appearance is solid and grand, worthy of the models of ancient masonry by which it is surrounded. There is no attempt at ornament. The entire cost was 140,000 scudi (£33,000), [Footnote 93] and the halfpenny toll has already gone far toward repaying it.
[Footnote 93: We drove, the other day, under the viaduct of the Brighton Railway for the sake of comparing it with our memory of l^Ariccia, and were disappointed to find it a slender brick affair, for which the meaningless display of stone at the top had not prepared us. It consists of thirty-seven arches, sixty feet high, and is a little over a quarter of a mile in length. We were informed its cost was £58,000.]
Close under it lies the old ruined tomb commonly called of the Horatii and Curiatii but now determined to be that of Aruns, son of Porsenna. It has all the appearance of being of Etruscan work, and the remains are very peculiar. It is a square structure, forty-six feet every way and twenty feet high; at the four corners are the remains of four small cones, one being nearly perfect; in the centre is a cylinder, twenty-three feet across, made to contain the urn.
Our donkeys carried us bravely up the rugged hill, and then we found, to our regret, we must leave the Chigi palace, Duke Sforza's infant schools, and other objects of interest for another visit; we had only time to get back to Genzano. A great deal of business had been done at the fair, and many hearts won by the fair. The booth-keepers, having sold off their stock, had shut up shop and gone away, and the merry couples were circulating freely. The rosemaried pork and Genzano wine had given them strength and vigor and gaiety—let it not be understood that we see any trace of excess; all is mirth and good humor and picturesqueness. At last six o'clock strikes, and, like an army marshalled by the word of command, the spontaneous and unanimous will of the thousands of sightseers brings them in serried procession up the broad street, where the Infiorata lies sparkling and rendering up its varied and gorgeous reflections to the sun's rays which bathe it.
Beautiful and delicate tribute of a poetical people! The occasion is the festival of the Blessed Sacrament; and as it is carried among them in solemn procession the custom of all Catholic countries is to strew flowers along the way; but here the idea has taken a development of a surpassing order, if not unique—as if no care could be too great: not only are the most brilliant flowers planted months before, and collected from distant contributors, but when the day arrives all these are made to form the most exquisite [{612}] mosaics. What is a Gobelins carpet to this weft of nature's own materials! A cord is drawn up both sides of the road to keep the flowered centre clear, and no one thinks of infringing the slight barrier. The rising ground is most favorable for displaying in two lines, ascending and descending, the endless variety of elaborate devices of tesselation. Costly marbles of different hues fitly pave the basilica; the glazed axulejos cooled the Moslem's feet at the same time that they pleased his eye; the velvet-pile tapestries of British looms carpet the bleak floors of our northern homes; and the stiff geometrical tiles, angular and uncomfortable as everything Gothic is, suit very well to our Gothic churches. Each and all have their fitness; and what is the Infiorata? It is the tribute of a simple and poor, but imaginative and loving, people "preparing to meet their God."
"O earth, grow flowers beneath his feet,
And thou, O sun, shine bright this day!
He comes, he comes,—O heaven on earth!
Our Jesus comes upon his way,"
sings one of their hymns for the occasion. And, poor tillers of the earth, the only offering they can make is of the flowers which "her children are." We looked on with an artist's and humanitarian's enjoyment. And delicious enjoyment it was! It was the fresh enjoyment of our childhood over again to trace the rich mosaic designs spread before us; and we pity him who does not know the enjoyment of the sensation of color. There were the arms of the Stato Pontificio, and of the paese, and of the Cesarini and Jacobini, with all their bearings and all their tinctures and then, as it were, the arms of the blessed sacrament—the symbols under which it is figured. The herald must find a new nomenclature; already he has a separate one for commonalty, nobility, and royalty, but now, for a "greater than Solomon," he must devise another. To his "sol, topaz, or," he must add the marigold; and to his "luna, pearl, argent," the lily. Then came arabesques in perplexing mazes of tracery; every line true, and every harmony or contrast of tint faultless. By a refinement least of all to be expected, in the centre of some of the compartments a tiny fountain had been introduced, "flinging delicious coolness round the air, and verdure o'er the ground." Nothing that poets have fabled of fairyland or paradise ever exceeded it in imaginative luxuriance.
"O what a wilderness of flowers!
It seemed as though from all the bowers
And fairest fields of all the year
The mingled spoils were scattered here.
The pathway like a garden breathes
With the rich buds that o'er it lie,
As if a shower of fairy wreaths
Had fallen upon it from the sky."