We were long silent, and then broke forth with cries of admiration of which the marvelous echo made eloquence.
"Did you ever," said the cicerone after we had left the building, "hear such music as that?"
"The papal choir does not equal it," we answered with one voice.
The cicerone was not to be silenced even with such a tribute, and he went on:
"Perhaps, as you are Americans, you know Moshu Feelmore, the President? No? Ah, what a fine man! You saw that he had his heart actually in his hand! Well, one day he said to me here, when I told him of the Baptistery echo, 'We have the finest echo in the world in the Hall of Congress.' I said nothing, but for answer I merely howled a little,—thus! Moshu Feelmore was convinced. Said he, 'There is no other echo in the world besides this. You are right.' I am unique," pursued the cicerone, "for making this echo. But," he added with a sigh, "it has been my ruin. The English have put me in all the guide-books, and sometimes I have to howl twenty times a day. When our Victor Emanuel came here I showed him the church, the tower, and the Campo Santo. Says the king, 'Pfui!'"—here the cicerone gave that sweeping outward motion with both hands by which Italians dismiss a trifling subject—"'make me the echo!' I was forced," concluded the cicerone with a strong sense of injury in his tone, "to howl half an hour without ceasing."
II.—THE FERRARA ROAD.
The delight of one of our first journeys over the road between Padua and Ferrara was a Roman cameriere out of place, who got into the diligence at Ponte Lagoscuro. We were six in all: The Englishman who thought it particularly Italian to say "Sì" three times for every assent; the Veneto (as the citizen of the province calls himself, the native of the city being Veneziano) going home to his farm near Padua; the German lady of a sour and dreadful countenance; our two selves, and the Roman cameriere. The last was worth all the rest—being a man of vast general information acquired in the course of service with families of all nations, and agreeably communicative. A brisk and lively little man, with dancing eyes, beard cut to the mode of the Emperor Napoleon, and the impressive habit of tapping himself on the teeth with his railroad-guide, and lifting his eyebrows when he says any thing specially worthy of remark. He, also, long after the conclusion of an observation, comes back to himself approvingly, with "Sì!" "Vabene!" "Ecco!" He speaks beautiful Italian and constantly, and in a little while we know that he was born at Ferrara, bred at Venice, and is now a citizen of Rome. "St. Peter's, Signori,—have you ever seen it?—is the first church of the world. At Ferrara lived Tasso and Ariosto. Venice is a lovely city. Ah! what beauty! But unique. My second country. Sì, Signori, la mia seconda patria." After a pause, "Va bene."
We hint to him that he is extremely fortunate in having so many countries, and that it will be difficult to exile so universal a citizen, which he takes as a tribute to his worth, smiles and says, "Ecco!"