says! He looks so rosy and so well!
The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The lady of the
family gets out. Ah sweet lady! Beautiful lady! The sister of
the lady of the family gets out. Great Heaven, Ma’amselle is
charming! First little boy gets out. Ah, what a beautiful little
boy! First little girl gets out. Oh, but this is an enchanting
child! Second little girl gets out. The landlady, yielding to the
finest impulse of our common nature, catches her up in her arms!
Second little boy gets out. Oh, the sweet boy! Oh, the tender
little family! The baby is handed out. Angelic baby! The baby
has topped everything. All the rapture is expended on the baby!
Then the two nurses tumble out; and the enthusiasm swelling into
madness, the whole family are swept up-stairs as on a cloud; while
the idlers press about the carriage, and look into it, and walk
round it, and touch it. For it is something to touch a carriage
that has held so many people. It is a legacy to leave one’s
children.
The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the night,
which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds in it:
through a dark passage, up two steps, down four, past a pump,
across a balcony, and next door to the stable. The other sleeping
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Dickens, Charles – Pictures From Italy
apartments are large and lofty; each with two small bedsteads,
tastefully hung, like the windows, with red and white drapery. The
sitting-room is famous. Dinner is already laid in it for three;
and the napkins are folded in cocked-hat fashion. The floors are
of red tile. There are no carpets, and not much furniture to speak
of; but there is abundance of looking-glass, and there are large
vases under glass shades, filled with artificial flowers; and there
are plenty of clocks. The whole party are in motion. The brave
Courier, in particular, is everywhere: looking after the beds,
having wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the
landlord, and picking up green cucumbers – always cucumbers; Heaven
knows where he gets them – with which he walks about, one in each
hand, like truncheons.
Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup; there are very large
loaves – one apiece; a fish; four dishes afterwards; some poultry
afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no lack of wine. There is
not much in the dishes; but they are very good, and always ready
instantly. When it is nearly dark, the brave Courier, having eaten
the two cucumbers, sliced up in the contents of a pretty large
decanter of oil, and another of vinegar, emerges from his retreat
below, and proposes a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower
frowns down upon the court-yard of the inn. Off we go; and very
solemn and grand it is, in the dim light: so dim at last, that the
polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of
candle in his hand, to grope among the tombs with – and looks among
the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his
own.
Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of
the inn are supping in the open air, at a great table; the dish, a
stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron
cauldron it was boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and
are very merry; merrier than the gentleman with the red beard, who
is playing billiards in the light room on the left of the yard,
where shadows, with cues in their hands, and cigars in their
mouths, cross and recross the window, constantly. Still the thin
Cure walks up and down alone, with his book and umbrella. And
there he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we
are fast asleep.
We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful day, shaming
yesterday’s mud upon the carriage, if anything could shame a
carriage, in a land where carriages are never cleaned. Everybody
is brisk; and as we finish breakfast, the horses come jingling into