From where I stood I saw the Pope's face only in profile: it was gentle and benign enough, but not great in expression, and the smile on it almost degenerated into a simper. His Holiness had a cold; and his recitative, though full, was not smooth. He was all priest when, in the midst of the service, he hawked, held his handkerchief up before his face, a little way off, and ruthlessly spat in it!
FORZA MAGGIORE.
I imagine that Grossetto is not a town much known to travel, for it is absent from all the guide-books I have looked at. However, it is chief in the Maremma, where sweet Pia de' Tolommei languished and perished of the poisonous air and her love's cruelty, and where, so many mute centuries since, the Etrurian cities flourished and fell. Further, one may say that Grossetto is on the diligence road from Civita Vecchia to Leghorn, and that in the very heart of the place there is a lovely palm-tree, rare, if not sole, in that latitude. This palm stands in a well-sheltered, dull little court, out of every thing's way, and turns tenderly toward the wall that shields it on the north. It has no other company but a beautiful young girl, who leans out of a window high over its head, and I have no doubt talks with it. At the moment we discovered the friends, the maiden was looking pathetically to the northward, while the palm softly stirred and opened its plumes, as a bird does when his song is finished; and there is very little question but it had just been singing to her that song of which the palms are so fond,—
"Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh'."
Grossetto does her utmost to hide the secret of this tree's existence, as if a hard, matter-of-fact place ought to be ashamed of a sentimentality of the kind. It pretended to be a very worldly town, and tried to keep us in the neighborhood of its cathedral, where the caffè and shops are, and where, in the evening, four or five officers of the garrison clinked their sabres on the stones, and promenaded up and down, and as many ladies shopped for gloves; and as many citizens sat at the principal caffè and drank black coffee. This was lively enough; and we knew that the citizens were talking of the last week's news and the Roman question; that the ladies were really looking for loves, not gloves; that such of the officers as had no local intrigue to keep their hearts at rest were terribly bored, and longed for Florence or Milan or Turin.
Besides the social charms of her piazza, Grossetto put forth others of an artistic nature. The cathedral was very old and very beautiful,—built of alternate lines of red and white marble, and lately restored in the best spirit of fidelity and reverence. But it was not open, and we were obliged to turn from it to the group of statuary in the middle of the piazza, representative of the Maremma and Family returning thanks to the Grand Duke Leopold III. of Tuscany for his goodness in causing her swamps to be drained. The Maremma and her children are arrayed in the scant draperies of Allegory, but the Grand Duke is fully dressed, and is shown looking down with some surprise at their figures, and with a visible doubt of the propriety of their public appearance in that state.
There was also a Museum at Grossetto, and I wonder what was in it?
The wall of the town was perfect yet, though the moat at its feet had been so long dry that it was only to be known from the adjacent fields by the richness of its soil. The top of the wall had been leveled, and planted with shade, and turned into a peaceful promenade, like most of such mediæval defenses in Italy; though I am not sure that a little military life did not still linger about a bastion here and there. From somewhere, when we strolled out early in the morning, to walk upon the wall, there came to us a throb of drums; but I believe that the only armed men we saw, beside the officers in the piazza, were the numerous sportsmen resorting at that season to Grossetto for the excellent shooting in the marshes. All the way to Florence we continued to meet them and their dogs; and our inn at Grossetto overflowed with abundance of game. On the kitchen floor and in the court were heaps of larks, pheasants, quails, and beccafichi, at which a troop of scullion-boys constantly plucked, and from which the great, noble, beautiful, white-aproned cook forever fried, stewed, broiled, and roasted. We lived chiefly upon these generous birds during our sojourn, and found, when we attempted to vary our bill of fare, that the very genteel waiter attending us had few distinct ideas beyond them. He was part of the repairs and improvements which that hostelry had recently undergone, and had evidently come in with the four-pronged forks, the chromo-lithographs of Victor Emanuel, Garibaldi, Solferino, and Magenta in the large dining-room, and the iron stove in the small one. He had nothing, evidently, in common with the brick floors of the bed-chambers, and the ancient rooms with great fire-places. He strove to give a Florentine blandishment to the rusticity of life in the Maremma; and we felt sure that he must know what beefsteak was. When we ordered it, he assumed to be perfectly conversant with it, started to bring it, paused, turned, and, with a great sacrifice of personal dignity, demanded, "Bifsteca di manzo, o bifsteca di motone?"—"Beefsteak of beef, or beefsteak of mutton?"