The Italians | Page 3

tribes that the husband must,
under a money penalty, conduct his wife to the festival of the Holy
Countenance once at least in four years? The programme is this: First,
they enter the cathedral, kneel at the glistening shrine of the black
crucifix, kiss its golden slipper, and hear mass. Then they will grasp
such goods as the gods provide them, in street, _café_, eating-house, or
day theatre; make purchases in the shops and booths, and stroll upon
the ramparts. Later, when the sun sinks westward over the mountains,
and the deep canopy of twilight falls, they will return by the way that
they have come, until the coming year.
* * * * *
Within the city, from before daybreak, church-bells--and Lucca
abounds in belfries fretted tier upon tier, with galleries of delicate
marble colonnettes, all ablaze in the sunshine--have pealed out merrily.
Every church-door, draped with gold tissue and silken stuffs, more or
less splendid, is thrown wide open. Every shop is closed, save _cafés_,
hotels, and tobacco-shops (where, by command of the King of New
Italy, infamous cigars are sold). Eating-tables are spread at the corners
of the streets and under the trees in the piazza, benches are ranged
everywhere where benches can stand. The streets are filling every
moment as fresh multitudes press through the city gates--those grand

old gates, where the marble lions of Lucca keep guard, looking toward
the mountains.
For a carriage to pass anywhere in the streets would be impossible, so
tightly are flapping Leghorn hats, and veils, snowy handkerchiefs, and
red caps and brigand hats, packed together. Bells ring, and there are
waftings of military music borne through the air. Trumpet-calls at the
different barracks answer to each other. Cannons are fired. Each man,
woman, and child shouts, screams, and laughs. All down the dark,
cavernous streets, in the great piazza, at the sindaco's, at college, at club,
public offices, and hotels, at the grand old palaces, untouched since the
middle ages--the glory of the city--at every house, great and
small--flutter gaudy draperies; crimson, amber, violet, and gold,
according to purse and condition, either of richest brocade, or of
Eastern stuffs wrought in gold and needle-work, or--the family carpet
or bed-furniture hung out for show. Banners wave from every
house-top and tower, the Italian tricolor and the Savoy cross, white, on
a red ground; flowers and garlands are wreathed on the fronts of the
stern old walls. If peasants, and shopkeepers, and monks, priests,
beggars, and hoi polloi generally, possess the pavement, overhead
every balcony, gallery, terrace, and casement, is filled with company,
representatives of the historic families of Lucca, the Manfredi, Possenti,
Navascoes, Bernardini, dal Portico, Bocella, Manzi, da Gia, Orsetti,
Ruspoli--feudal names dear to native ears. The noble marquis, or his
excellency the count, lord of broad acres on the plains, or principalities
in the mountains, or of hoarded wealth at the National Bank--is he not
Lucchese also to the backbone? And does he not delight in the festival
as keenly as that half-naked beggar, who rattles his box for alms, with a
broad grin on his dirty face?
Resplendent are the ladies in the balconies, dressed in their best--like
bands of fluttering ribbon stretched across the sombre-fronted palaces;
aristocratic daughters, and dainty consorts. They are not chary of their
charms. They laugh, fan themselves, lean over sculptured balustrades,
and eye the crowded streets, talking with lip and fan, eye and gesture.
In the long, narrow street of San Simone, behind the cathedral of San

Martino, stand the two Guinigi Palaces. They are face to face. One is
ditto of the other. Each is in the florid style of Venetian-Gothic, dating
from the beginning of the fourteenth century. Both were built by Paolo
Guinigi, head of the illustrious house of that name, for forty years
general and tyrant of the Republic of Lucca. Both palaces bear his arms,
graven on marble tablets beside the entrance. Both are of brick, now
dulled and mellowed into a reddish white. Both have walls of enormous
thickness. The windows of the upper stories--quadruple casements
divided, Venetian-like, by twisted pillarettes richly carved--are faced
and mullioned with marble.
The lower windows (mere square apertures) are barred with iron. The
arched portals opening to the streets are low, dark, and narrow. The
inner courts gloomy, damp, and prison-like. Brass ornaments, sockets,
rings, and torch-holders of iron, sculptured emblems, crests, and
cognizances in colored marble, are let into the outer walls. In all else,
ornamentation is made subservient to defense. These are city fortresses
rather than ancestral palaces. They were constructed to resist either
attack or siege.
Rising out of the overhanging roof (supported on wooden rafters) of the
largest and most stately of the two palaces, where twenty-three groups
of clustered casements, linked by slender pillars, extend in