In Troubador-Land | Page 4

fortnight there could be no question, not a sewer in the vast city would be free to do anything else but mischief. I did not go on to the Vatican galleries that day. I could not have enjoyed the statues in the Braccio Nuovo, nor the frescoes in the Loggia. I went home, found Messrs. Allen's letter, packed my Gladstone bag, and bolted. I shall never learn who got the microbe destined for me, which I dodged.
I went to Florence; at the inn where I put up--one genuinely Italian, Bonciani's,--I made an acquaintance, a German Jew, a picture-dealer with a shop in a certain capital, no matter which, editor of a _bric-à-brac_ paper, and a right merry fellow. I introduce him to the reader because he afforded me some information concerning Provence. He had a branch establishment--never mind where, but in Provence--and he had come to Florence to pick up pictures and _bric-à-brac_.
Our acquaintance began as follows. We sat opposite each other at table in the evening. A large rush-encased flask is set before each guest in a swing carriage, that enables him to pour out his glassful from the big-bellied flask without effort. Each flask is labelled variously Chianti, Asti, Pomino, but all the wines have a like substance and flavour, and each is an equally good light dinner-wine. A flask when full costs three francs twenty centimes; and when the guest falls back in his seat, with a smile of satisfaction on his face, and his heart full of good will towards all men, for that he has done his dinner, then the bottle is taken out, weighed, and the guest charged the amount of wine he has consumed. He gets a fresh flask at every meal.
"Du lieber Himmel!" exclaimed my _vis-à-vis_. "I do b'lieve I hev drunk dree francs. Take up de flasche and weigh her. Tink so?"
"I can believe it without weighing the bottle," I replied.
"And only four sous--twenty centimes left!" exclaimed the old gentleman, meditatively. "But four sous is four sous. It is de price of mine paper"--brightening in his reflections--"I can but shell one copy more, and I am all right." Brightening to greater brilliancy as he turns to me: "Will you buy de last number of my paper? She is in my pocket. She is ver' interesting. Oh! ver' so. Moche information for two pence."
"I shall be charmed," I said, and extended twenty centimes across the table.
"Ach Tausend! Dass ist herrlich!" and he drew off the last drops of Pomino. "Now I will tell you vun ding. Hev you been in Provence?"
"Provence! Why--I am on my way there, now."
"Den listen to me. Ebery peoples hev different ways of doing de same ding. You go into a cabaret dere, and you ask for wine. De patron brings you a bottle, and at de same time looks at de clock and wid a bit of chalk he mark you down your time. You say you will drink at two pence, or dree pence, or four pence. You drink at dat price you have covenanted for one hour, you drink at same price anodder hour, and you sleep--but you pay all de same, wedder you drink or wedder you sleep, two pence, or dree pence, or four pence de hour. It is an old custom. You understand? It is de custom of de country--of La belle Provence."
"I quite understand that it is to the interest of the taverner to make his customers drunk."
"Drunk!" repeated my Mosaic acquaintance. "I will tell you one ding more, ver' characteristic of de nationalities. A Frenchman--_il boit_; a German--_er sauft_; and an Englishman--he gets fresh. Der you hev de natures of de dree peoples as in a picture. De Frenchman, he looks to de moment, and not beyond. Il boit. De German, he looks to de end. Er sauft. De Englishman, he sits down fresh and intends to get fuddled; but he is a hypocrite. He does not say de truth to hisself nor 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 _baton_, and gorgeous livery kept guard. Up the white marble stairs, into stately halls overladen with gilding, the walls crowded with paintings