How many tickets were issued, Caper was never able to find out; but he was told that for a one thousand dollar tombola the number was limited to ninety thousand.
The tickets, as will be seen above, are divided into three lines, with five divisions in each line, and you can fill up the fifteen divisions with any numbers running from one to ninety, that you may see fit. Ninety tickets, with numbers from one to ninety, are put in a revolving glass barrel, and after being well shaken up, some one draws out one number at random, (the slips of paper being rolled up in such manner that the numbers on them can not be seen.) It is passed to the judges, and is then read aloud, and exposed to view, in conspicuous figures, on a stand or stands; and so on until the tombola is won or the numbers all drawn.
Whoever has three consecutive figures on a line, beginning from left hand to right, wins the Terno; if four consecutive figures, the Quaterno; if five figures, or a full line, the Cinquina; and whoever has all fifteen figures, wins the Tombola. It often happens that several persons win the Terno, etc., at the same time, in which case the amount of the Terno, etc., is equally divided among them. These public tombolas are like too many thimble-rig tables, ostensibly started for charitable objects, and it is popularly whispered that the Roman nobility and heads of the Church purchase vast numbers of these tickets, and never fill them up; but then again, they are not large enough for shaving, and are too small for curl-papers; besides, six hundred and fifty scudi! Whew!
The Piazza Navona, bearing on its face, on week-days, the most terrible eruptions of piles of old iron, rags, paintings, books, boots, vegetables, crockery, jackdaws, contadini, and occasional dead cats, wore on the Sunday of the tombola—it was Advent Sunday—a clean, bright, and even joyful look. From many windows hung gay cloths and banners; the three fountains were making Roman pearls and diamonds of the first water; the entire length (seven hundred and fifty feet) and breadth of the square was filled with the Roman people; three bands of military music played uncensurable airs, since the public censor permitted them; and several companies of soldiers, with loaded guns, stood all ready to slaughter the plebe. It was a sublime spectacle.
But the curtain rose; that is to say, the tombola commenced. At a raised platform, a small boy, dressed in black, popularly supposed to be a cholera orphan, rolled back his shirt-cuffs—he had a shirt—plunged his hand into the glass barrel, and produced a slip of paper; an assistant carried it to the judges—one resembled Mr. Pecksniff—and then the crier announced the number, and, presto! on a large blackboard the number appeared, so that every one could see it.
Caper found the number on his ticket, and was marking it off, when a countryman at his side asked him if he would see if the number was on his ticket, as he could not read figures. Caper accordingly looked it over, and finding that it was there, marked it off for him.
'Padrone mio, thank you,' said the man, evidently determined, since he had found out a scholar, to keep close by him.
'Seventeen!' called out the tombola-crier.
'C——o!' said the contadino, with joy in his face; 'seventeen is always my lucky number. My wife was seventeen years old when I married her. My donkey was killed by the railroad cars the other day, and he gave just seventeen groans before he died. I shall have luck to-day.'
We refrain from writing the exclamation the contadino prefaced his remarks with, for fear the reader might have a good Italian dictionary—an article, by the way, the writer has never yet seen. Suffice it to say, that the exclamations made use of by the Romans, men and women, not only of the lower but even the middling class, are of a nature exceedingly natural, and plainly point to Bacchic and Phallic sources. The bestémmia of the Romans is viler than the blasphemy of English or Americans.