Caper proposed finishing a bottle of wine with Wardor, in honor of the day; so the latter piloted him up street and then down a flight of steps to a quiet wine-shop, where, sitting on a shady terrace, they could calmly enjoy the lovely landscape spread below them, and look over the town, over the valley, to far-away Segni high up in the Volscians. The landlord's wife, a buxom, comely woman, in full holiday costume, brought them a flask of cool wine and glasses, presenting them at the same time with a couple of very large sweet apples, the largest of which was thirteen inches in circumference by actual measurement. So you see they have apples as well as oranges in Italy; only, apples are practical, so they are generally omitted in the poetical descriptions of the blue-skyed land.
Caper and Wardor dined together in a very crowded inn, where the maccaroni must have been cooked by the ton, to judge of the sized dish the two artists were presented with—and which they finished! Chickens, lamb chops, salad, and two flasks of wine at last satisfied them. When they left the table, Wardor proposed their calling on a Roman family, who were spending the summer in the town. They found the house they occupied crowded with guests, who, having finished dinner, were busily employed dancing to the music of two guitars and a flute; that is, the younger part of them, while the elders applauded vociferously, entering into the amusement with a reckless spirit of fun and good nature, which people who have to keep shady nine tenths of the year for fear of their rulers, are very apt to indulge in the remaining tenth.
Elisa, the daughter of the Roman family, received Caper with hearty welcome, chiding him for having been all summer at Segni, and yet not coming near them, and entreating him to come to Genazzano and make them a long visit. She introduced him at once to her affianced husband, a handsome young doctor of the town, a man of sterling ability and sound common sense, who very soon made Caper at home, insisted on his dancing the Tarantella and Saltarella Napolitana with a lively, lithe young lady, who cut our artist's heart to fiddlestrings before they had danced five minutes together a polka—for let the truth be told, Caper never could dance the Tarantella.
Wardor, in the meantime, had been led off in triumph to a side-table, and was making a very hearty second dinner; he not having force of mind enough to do like Caper and refuse a good offer! Caper had to drink a few tumblers (not wine-glasses) of wine, and found it beneficial in dancing. It may be as well to repeat here, in order to calm all apprehensions of our artist being a hard drinker, that all these wines around Rome, with few exceptions, are little stronger than mild sweet cider, and that satiety will generally arrive before inebriety. Ask any sober and rigorously correct traveller, who has ever been there, if this is not so. If he speaks from experience, he will say: 'Certainly!' 'Of course!' 'To be sure!' And again: 'Why not?'
It is not asserted here that the Romans of the city or surrounding country never get tipsy; but that it is only occasionally they have change enough to do so; consequently, a beautiful state of sobriety is observed by those travellers who—never observe anything.
The moon was shining over the old gate-towers of Genazzano when Caper mounted his horse, and, in company with two Segnians, rode forth from the fifth festa, and over the hills through Cavi, and over the valley past Valmontone, and then up the steep road to his summer home; wondering if in far-away America they were dreaming of a man who was going through a course of weekly Fourth-of-July's, and how long it would be before the world came to an end if such a state of things existed in any country where people had liberty to study geography, and were ruled by politicians instead of priests?
'May I ask your candid opinion of the great moral effect of so many holidays on an uneducated population?' inquired Caper one day of Rocjean, while speaking of the festivals of the Papal States.
'Certainly you may! My opinion is that the head of the state, carrying out the gigantic policy of his predecessors, believes: 'That that government governs best that gives the greatest amount of fiddling to the greatest amount of its children.''
'But,' objected Caper, 'I don't see where the fiddling comes in.'