away, was full of travellers. There were no disengaged rooms in either of the inns, and several persons had been obliged to seek accommodation as best they might, among the cottages of the borgo.
“Well, Beppo, I wish them a pleasant journey, that’s all,” was my half-careless reply, as I went on grinding and mixing my colours.
“The signor will not want his bill, then?” said the waiter, opening his eyes in surprise; “the patron made so sure milordo would accompany the rest, that he has drawn the account all ready, and bade me ask if Giorgio should harness the sledge.”
“In short,” said I, laughing, “you seem determined to turn me out, whether I will or no. I have no more intention of crossing the mountain to-day than I have of taking a header into the Ticino yonder, and shall stop here another week, unless the patron absolutely ejects me.”
Of course Beppo bowed and shrugged, assuring me in his best Italian that the Hôtel de Poste was only too much honoured by my presence, that the landlord and landlady would be overjoyed to hear of my prolonged stay, and that he would hurry off to bespeak my dinner,—no useless precaution at that season.
I had been six days at Airolo, and was in no haste to leave it. Much of my winter’s work at Rome consisted of mere sketches and crude compositions, outlines that needed study and care as to filling-in the details. And my old studio in the Via San Barbara had been too full of cheery friends, perpetually dropping in to communicate the pleasant babble of Roman news, to be a good arena for steady toil. Airolo was a capital place for work; my room had a good north window, and there was nothing to distract a painter’s attention from his canvas and colours. Besides, in my rambles among the spurs and offsets of the Alps, I came to many glorious bits of savage wintry scenery, and saw nature under a new aspect. Such glimpses of stainless snow and rifted ice are valuable to an artist, and my portfolio and my memory grew richer every day.
On this account, I was in no hurry to cross the mountains. A week or two more or less was nothing to me, and I should be in London quite early enough as it was. But man is a gregarious animal, and presently, as I stood smoking my cigar in the porch and watching the bustle and stir of the departure, I could not help feeling a half wish that I were one of the wayfarers.
A blithe and active scene it was. There were about forty mules and pack-horses, all as heavily laden as was consistent with a rapid progress on a steep road, and guided by a knot of hardy fellows, Italians and German Swiss, whose sun-browned faces spoke of long familiarity with the highway. Besides these, there were three or four sledges, whose occupants were burghers of Lucerne, going home with spring purchases made at Milan, two monks returning to a convent in one of the Forest Cantons, and a cantatrice bound for some theatre in France or Germany, where she had an engagement. The pedestrians were a couple of Swiss soldiers—Papal guardsmen—on furlough, a few Modenese or Tuscan modellers in plaster of Paris, straw-plaiters, and the like, and three pilgrims. The latter were dull, robustly-built peasants from Rhenish Germany, who had been, in pursuance of a vow, to pray at Loretto, and whose unimpassioned, brick-red faces, contrasted curiously with the scallop-shells in their hats and the large tawdry crosses pinned in front of their blouses.
The “caravan” was made up by a dark-green travelling carriage,—a heavy, roomy, rumbling affair, such as Florentine coachmakers build for a price that in Long Acre would scarcely purchase a gig, and which, though ugly enough, stands rough usage well. This carriage belonged to an English family who had arrived two days before, and who, finding no room at the Poste, had been obliged to put up at the Silver Pelican, the other inn of the village. Of these, my countrymen, I had seen nothing, save one glimpse of the skirt of a lady’s dress vanishing into the doorway of the Pelican, and a nearer view of a stout elderly Englishman, who spoke no foreign language, and whom I once had the pleasure of directing to the Post Office, as he stood with an unpaid letter in his hand, gazing perplexedly about him in the little market-place of Airolo.
Under ordinary circumstances, people of such various castes and occupations would have journeyed independently of one another, but winter in the Swiss Alps makes travelling precarious; and the spring season is even more dangerous than that of winter, the masses of snow being never so formidable as when they have been partly thawed by the sun and rain, so that fellowship and prompt human help in the hour of need are not to be despised high on Splugen or St. Gothard, even by the haughtiest and most confident. On this account it was that all these persons were to start together on their slow way over the mountains. Not that any particular danger was to be feared to-day. Far from it. The street was thronged with gazers, whose voices were loud in cheerful prediction.
“Ah, holy San Carlo, what a day! The sun comes like a blessing on the young vine-shoots; ay, and on all my rheumatic bones, neighbour Brigitta,” said one old man of the upper class of burghers.
“Body of Bacchus! the almanack has slipped a month or two, and June must be upon us before we are ready for him, eh, amici?” asked one of the village wags, while men and women, boys and girls, agreed in wishing a “bon viaggio,” in their hybrid patois, to the departing guests, whose hopeful looks showed that they, too, looked forward to an easy and agreeable passage of the Alpine road.
The sun shone out hot and bright; the blue torrent, roaring low as it sped by from one rocky ledge to another, glittered like a broad riband of burnished steel in the rays; the tender young vine leaves seemed to open to the welcome warmth, and the whole valley assumed a gay and jocund look at this precocious smile of the coming summer. Merrily jangled the bells on the head-stalls of the pack-mules, and the post-horses, waiting for the English party, shook out sharp impatient music from their grelôts as they pawed the paving-stones of the hilly street. Even brutes were exhilarated by the air and by the day, and were eager to set off.
