In Troubador-Land | Page 5

to nobody,
he says, I will get fresh, when he means de odder ding. Big humbug.
You understand?"
One morning my Jew friend said to me: "Do you want to see de, what
you call behind-de-scenes of Florence? Ver' well, you come wid me. I
am going after pictures."
He had a carriage at the door. I jumped in with him, and we spent the
day in driving about the town, visiting palaces and the houses of
professional men and tradesmen--of all who were "down on their luck,"
and wanted to part with art-treasures. Here we entered a palace, of
roughed stone blocks after the ancient Florentine style, where a
splendid porter with cocked hat, a silver-headed _bâton_, and gorgeous
livery kept guard. Up the white marble stairs, into stately halls
overladen with gilding, the walls crowded with paintings in cumbrous
but resplendent frames. Prince So-and-So had got into financial
difficulties, and wanted to part with some of his heirlooms.
There we entered a mean door in a back street, ascended a dirty stair,

and came into a suite of apartments, where a dishevelled woman in a
dirty split dressing-gown received us and showed us into her husband's
sanctum, crowded with rare old paintings on gold grounds. Her good
man had been a collector of the early school of art; now he was ill, he
could not attend to his business, he might not recover, and whilst he
was ill his wife was getting rid of some of his treasures.
There we entered the mansion of a widow, who had lost her husband
recently, a rich merchant. The heirs were quarrelling over the spoil, and
she was in a hurry to make what she could for herself before a valuer
came to reckon the worth of the paintings and silver and cabinets.
In that day I saw many sides of life.
"But how in the world," I asked of my guide, "did you know that all
these people were wanting to sell?"
"I have my agents ebberywhere," was his reply.
I thought of the Diable boiteux carrying the student of Alcala over the
city, Madrid, removing the roofs of the houses, and exposing to his
view the stories of the lives and miseries of those within.
I was at Florence on Easter Eve. A ceremony of a very peculiar
character takes place there on that day at noon. In the morning a
monstrous black structure on wheels, some twenty-five feet high, is
brought into the square before the cathedral by oxen, garlanded with
flowers. This erection, the carro, is also decorated with flowers, but is
likewise covered with fireworks. A rope is then extended from the
carro to a pole which is set up in the choir of the Duomo, before the
high altar. For this purpose the great west doors are thrown open, and
the rope extends the whole length of the nave. Upon it, close to the pole,
is perched a white dove of plaster.
Crowds assemble both in the square and in the nave of the cathedral.
Peasants from the countryside come in in bands, and before the hour of
noon every vantage place is occupied, and the square and the streets
commanding it are filled with a sea of heads.

[Illustration: The Carro.]
At half-past eleven, the archbishop, the canons, the choir, go down the
nave in procession, and make the circuit of the Duomo, then re-enter
the cathedral, take their places in the choir, and the mass for Easter Eve
is begun. At the Gospel--at the stroke of twelve, a match is applied to a
fusee, and instantly the white dove flies along the rope, pouring forth a
tail of fire, down the nave, out at the west gates, over the heads of the
crowd, reaches the carro, ignites a fusee there, turns, and, still
propelled by its fiery tail, whizzes along the cord again, till it has
reached its perch on the pole in the choir, when the fire goes out and it
remains stationary. But in the meantime the match ignited by the dove
has communicated with the squibs and crackers attached to the carro,
and the whole mass of painted wood and flowers is enveloped in fire
and smoke, from which issue sheets of flame and loud detonations.
Meanwhile, mass is being sung composedly within the choir, as though
nothing was happening without. The fireworks continue to explode for
about a quarter of an hour, and then the great garlanded oxen, white,
with huge horns, are reyoked to the carro, and it is drawn away.
The flight of the dove for its course of about 540 feet is watched by the
peasants with breathless attention, for they take its easy or jerky flight
as ominous of the weather for the rest of the year