The rising of the Italian people from under their unutterable wrongs, and the tardy burst
of day upon them after the long long night of oppression that has darkened their beautiful
country, have naturally caused my mind to dwell often of late on my own small
wanderings in Italy. Connected with them, is a curious little drama, in which the
character I myself sustained was so very subordinate that I may relate its story without
any fear of being suspected of self-display. It is strictly a true story.
I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain small town on the Mediterranean. I
have had my dinner at the inn, and I and the mosquitoes are coming out into the streets
together. It is far from Naples; but a bright, brown, plump little woman-servant at the inn,
is a Neapolitan, and is so vivaciously expert in panto-mimic action, that in the single
moment of answering my request to have a pair of shoes cleaned which I have left up-
stairs, she plies imaginary brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing
the shoes up, and laying them at my feet. I smile at the brisk little woman in perfect
satisfaction with her briskness; and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me
because I am pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delightfully. We are in the inn
yard. As the little woman's bright eyes sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking, I make bold
to offer her one; she accepts it none the less merrily, because I touch a most charming
little dimple in her fat cheek, with its light paper end. Glancing up at the many green
lattices to assure herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little woman then puts her
two little dimple arms a-kimbo, and stands on tiptoe to light her cigarette at mine. 'And
now, dear little sir,' says she, puffing out smoke in a most innocent and cherubic manner,
'keep quite straight on, take the first to the right and probably you will see him standing at
his door.'
I gave a commission to 'him,' and I have been inquiring about him. I have carried the
commission about Italy several months. Before I left England, there came to me one night
a certain generous and gentle English nobleman (he is dead in these days when I relate
the story, and exiles have lost their best British friend), with this request: 'Whenever you
come to such a town, will you seek out one Giovanni Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-
shop there, mention my name to him suddenly, and observe how it affects him?' I
accepted the trust, and am on my way to discharge it.
The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot unwholesome evening with no cool
sea-breeze. Mosquitoes and fire-flies are lively enough, but most other creatures are faint.
The coquettish airs of pretty young women in the tiniest and wickedest of dolls' straw
hats, who lean out at opened lattice blinds, are almost the only airs stirring. Very ugly and
haggard old women with distaffs, and with a grey tow upon them that looks as if they
were spinning out their own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is very
difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against house walls. Everybody who
has come for water to the fountain, stays there, and seems incapable of any such energetic
idea as going home. Vespers are over, though not so long but that I can smell the heavy
