Hauntings | Page 3

the setting sun, and the
valleys filled with bluish shadow and mist, only a band of threatening
smoke-red remaining behind the towers and cupolas of the city on its
mountain-top, and the sound of church bells floated across the precipice
from Urbania, I almost expected, at every turning of the road, that a
troop of horsemen, with beaked helmets and clawed shoes, would
emerge, with armor glittering and pennons waving in the sunset. And
then, not two hours ago, entering the town at dusk, passing along the

deserted streets, with only a smoky light here and there under a shrine
or in front of a fruit-stall, or a fire reddening the blackness of a smithy;
passing beneath the battlements and turrets of the palace.... Ah, that
was Italy, it was the Past!
August 21st.--
And this is the Present! Four letters of introduction to deliver, and an
hour's polite conversation to endure with the Vice-Prefect, the Syndic,
the Director of the Archives, and the good man to whom my friend
Max had sent me for lodgings....
August 22nd-27th.--
Spent the greater part of the day in the Archives, and the greater part of
my time there in being bored to extinction by the Director thereof, who
today spouted Aeneas Sylvius' Commentaries for three-quarters of an
hour without taking breath. From this sort of martyrdom (what are the
sensations of a former racehorse being driven in a cab? If you can
conceive them, they are those of a Pole turned Prussian professor) I
take refuge in long rambles through the town. This town is a handful of
tall black houses huddled on to the top of an Alp, long narrow lanes
trickling down its sides, like the slides we made on hillocks in our
boyhood, and in the middle the superb red brick structure, turreted and
battlemented, of Duke Ottobuono's palace, from whose windows you
look down upon a sea, a kind of whirlpool, of melancholy grey
mountains. Then there are the people, dark, bushy-bearded men, riding
about like brigands, wrapped in green-lined cloaks upon their shaggy
pack-mules; or loitering about, great, brawny, low-headed youngsters,
like the parti-colored bravos in Signorelli's frescoes; the beautiful boys,
like so many young Raphaels, with eyes like the eyes of bullocks, and
the huge women, Madonnas or St. Elizabeths, as the case may be, with
their clogs firmly poised on their toes and their brass pitchers on their
heads, as they go up and down the steep black alleys. I do not talk
much to these people; I fear my illusions being dispelled. At the corner
of a street, opposite Francesco di Giorgio's beautiful little portico, is a
great blue and red advertisement, representing an angel descending to
crown Elias Howe, on account of his sewing-machines; and the clerks

of the Vice-Prefecture, who dine at the place where I get my dinner,
yell politics, Minghetti, Cairoli, Tunis, ironclads, &c., at each other,
and sing snatches of La Fille de Mme. Angot, which I imagine they
have been performing here recently.
No; talking to the natives is evidently a dangerous experiment. Except
indeed, perhaps, to my good landlord, Signor Notaro Porri, who is just
as learned, and takes considerably less snuff (or rather brushes it off his
coat more often) than the Director of the Archives. I forgot to jot down
(and I feel I must jot down, in the vain belief that some day these scraps
will help, like a withered twig of olive or a three-wicked Tuscan lamp
on my table, to bring to my mind, in that hateful Babylon of Berlin,
these happy Italian days)--I forgot to record that I am lodging in the
house of a dealer in antiquities. My window looks up the principal
street to where the little column with Mercury on the top rises in the
midst of the awnings and porticoes of the market-place. Bending over
the chipped ewers and tubs full of sweet basil, clove pinks, and
marigolds, I can just see a corner of the palace turret, and the vague
ultramarine of the hills beyond. The house, whose back goes sharp
down into the ravine, is a queer up-and-down black place, whitewashed
rooms, hung with the Raphaels and Francias and Peruginos, whom
mine host regularly carries to the chief inn whenever a stranger is
expected; and surrounded by old carved chairs, sofas of the Empire,
embossed and gilded wedding-chests, and the cupboards which contain
bits of old damask and embroidered altar-cloths scenting the place with
the smell of old incense and mustiness; all of which are presided over
by Signor Porri's three maiden sisters--Sora Serafina, Sora Lodovica,
and Sora Adalgisa--the three Fates in person, even to the distaffs and
their black cats.
Sor Asdrubale, as they call my landlord, is also a notary. He regrets the
Pontifical Government,