a servant altogether. C was to be the cook, and I the housemaid; a worthy old lady, with a yellow pocket handkerchief on her head, a red jacket of no particular shape, and a fabulously short blue grown, came every morning to wash up; and a friendly smuggler occupied his leisure moments in drawing water and cutting wood for us, which occupation he began at four in the morning, whistling Garibaldi’s hymn all the while with distracting shrillness, and marvellous power of lungs, the sound being cheerful no doubt, but by no means conducive to slumber. We were, however, thoroughly tired of this primitive mode of life before a week was over: C had grown excessively red in the face in the performance of his functions, and I was very nearly bent double by the imperfect execution of mine. So we have ventured on another Barelegs, who has the additional attraction of a goître, and who appears as careful and willing a body as well can be. She calls us poveri forestieri, with an air of encouraging patronage highly gratifying to our feelings.
I wish I could give you an idea how utterly different everything is here to our life in England. From the break of day, when we rise to shut the shutters and exclude the blinding sun, to the last moment at night, when, having set all doors and windows open, we cautiously creep within our mosquito curtains, everything is un-English and strange. Some things, such as the appearance of C’s gardener with a huge basket of golden figs on his head, the fresh sound of the lake, which behaves like a small sea, and foams up in a most refreshing manner on the shingly shore, the delicious smell of the lemons that are being shipped away from the port, the pleasant rows on the lake in the moonlight, &c., are very delightful; but there are other things which are, to say the least of it, trying.
It is trying to see one’s well-known shirts, nightgowns, &c., being washed in the lake close in front of one’s own door, and handled and carefully examined by the entire population of B, while they make audible comments on the cut and colour of those garments. It is trying to be obliged to buy meat for all the week on Saturday, which is killing day, or to go without; trying to live in a land that looks fertility itself, and know that all vegetables have been burned up by the heat, so that even an occasional potato is a marvel and a treat; and to have to accept as a luxury a poor flabby little fresh-water fishling, who might as well have remained for ever in his native element for any sustenance to be obtained from his small body; trying, when one has ordered a fowl for dinner, to see the said fowl shortly after, sitting in a very nervous attitude with one leg tied to the table in the reception hall, alias kitchen, with his head cocked excessively on one side, as he watches the movements of Barelegs in an anxious manner, as if he had a horrid prevision of his coming fate. It is trying to live in a place not lighted at night, so that if one attempt a cheerful evening walk, one is certain to walk into heaps of nameless filth always thrown in the very centre of the narrow streets, or to stumble over the aged inhabitants who are cooling unseen on their doorsteps.
We have no books except the “Siege de la Rochelle,” by way of the last novelty; and our chief excitement is the arrival of the daily papers from Milan, for the first reading of which we quarrel in an unseemly manner every morning; and the coming, on three nights of the week, of the diligence from Brescia, which brings our letters.
The last three or four miles of road between Brescia and B are a rather rapid descent: part of the road is very narow, between the high walls of lemon gardens on each hand; and at distances of about a quarter of a mile there are little openings, into which mule carts and, at night, even foot passengers are obliged to retire, to prevent being squashed. The diligence always starts off at the beginning of the descent in a fast trot, which soon becomes a gallop, and a great whip-cracking is maintained the whole time, to warn the unwary that they must run for it. Now, as B is even of smaller importance than G (the Capo luogo of the district), the people of B have to endure the ignominy of seeing their friends, parcels, and letters rush by them to G, where the village magnates descend, and waste a great deal of time in getting out their luggage and quarrelling about the fare, and the buona manu to the conductor, during which time the Bites have to sit in patient anguish, and are then rewarded by being humbly re-conducted to B by the slow efforts of one horse. We find the excitement of awaiting this return so very bad for our digestions and tempers, that we generally go forth about a mile on the road, and stand on a rock above the road, in a menacing attitude, waving our mantles, like Gray’s Bard, denouncing “ruin on the ruthless king.” The driver knows what the wild-looking performance means, and as he gallops by he shouts out our fate. “Nothing for you, Signori miei!” or “Si Signori! letters for you!” as the case may be.
A little while ago C had to go to Brescia on business, and I took the opportunity of having our one setting-room whitewashed, for the broken and battered old frescoes afforded a lurking-place for many an unsightly insect. The operation of whitewashing was performed by an exceedingly aged and profoundly deaf old gentleman, with a very short ladder, a tiny pot of whitewash about the size of the domestic jam-pot of the period, and a brush such as one might use to wash in the sky in a moderate-sized water-colour drawing. As the jam-pot stood on the ground, and the respectable old gentleman had to descend to it, breathing very hard all the while, every time his small brush was dry, you can easily understand why the performance was of very long duration.
I wished to suggest various simple improvements, but finding that it was impossible to make the old gentleman hear, and that I had to poke at him with a stick every time I wanted to converse, I soon gave up the attempt in despair. One day—one fatal day—it occurred to me that I would give renewed vigour