Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 331, May, 1843. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ beasts, and do not lose a moment. There is a piastre for your buona-mano.'

      "They were soon at Florence.

      "The first care of the prince, after having breakfasted, for neither he nor the princess had eaten any thing since they had left Livorno, was to lay his complaint before a magistrate.

      "'Where is the paper?' said the judicial authority.

      "'I have none,' said the prince.

      "'Then I counsel you,' replied the judge, 'to let the matter drop. Only the next time give five piastres to the master, and a piastre and a half to the driver; you will save five piastres and a half, and arrive eighteen hours sooner.'"—P. 97.

      M. Dumas, however, arrives at Florence without any such disagreeable adventure as sleeping in a coach-house. He gives a pleasing description of the Florentine people, amongst whom the spirit of commerce has died away, but left behind a considerable share of the wealth and luxury that sprang from it. There is little spirit of enterprise; no rivalry between a class enriching itself and the class with whom wealth is hereditary; the jewels that were purchased under the reign of the Medici still shine without competitors on the promenade and at the opera. It is a people that has made its fortune, and lives contentedly on its revenues, and on what it gets from the stranger. "The first want of a Florentine," says our author, "is repose; even pleasure is secondary; it costs him some little effort to be amused. Wearied of its frequent political convulsions, the town of the Medici aspires only to that unbroken and enchanted slumber which fell, as the fairy tale informs us, on the beautiful lady in the sleepy wood. No one here seems to labour, except those who are tolling and ringing the church-bells, and they indeed appear to have rest neither day nor night."

      There are but three classes visible in Florence. The nobility—the foreigner—and the people. The nobility, a few princely houses excepted, spend but little, the people work but little, and it would be a marvel how these last lived if it were not for the foreigner. Every autumn brings them their harvest in the shape of a swarm of travellers from England, France, or Russia, and, we may now add, America. The winter pays for the long delicious indolence of the summer. Then the populace lounges, with interminable leisure, in their churches, on their promenades, round the doors of coffee-houses that are never closed either day or night; they follow their religious processions; they cluster with an easy good-natured curiosity round every thing that wears the appearance of a fête; taking whatever amusement presents itself, without caring to detain it, and quitting it without the least distrust that some other quite as good will occupy its place. "One evening we were roused," says our traveller, "by a noise in the street: two or three musicians of the opera, on leaving the theatre, had taken a fancy to go home playing a waltz. The scattered population of the streets arranged themselves, and followed waltzing. The men who could find no better partners, waltzed together. Five or six hundred persons were enjoying this impromptu ball, which kept its course from the opera house to the Port del Prato, where the last musician resided. The last musician having entered his house, the waltzers returned arm-in-arm, still humming the air to which they had been dancing."

      "It follows," continues M. Dumas, "from this commercial apathy, that at Florence you must seek after every thing you want. It never comes of itself—never presents itself before you;—everything there stays at home—rests in its own place. A foreigner who should remain only a month in the capital of Tuscany would carry away a very false idea of it. At first it seems impossible to procure the things the most indispensable, or those you do procure are bad; it is only after some time that you learn, and that not from the inhabitants, but from other foreigners who have resided there longer than yourself, where anything is to be got. At the end of six months you are still making discoveries of this sort; so that people generally quit Tuscany at the time they have learned to live there. It results from all this that every time you visit Florence you like it the better; if you should revisit it three or four times you would probably end by making of it a second country, and passing there the remainder of your lives."2

      Shall we visit the churches of Florence with M. Dumas? No, we are not in the vein. Shall we go with him to the theatres—to the opera—to the Pergola? Yes, but not to discuss the music or the dancing. Every body knows that at the great theatres of Italy the fashionable part of the audience pay very little attention to the music, unless it be a new opera, but make compensation by listening devoutly to the ballet. The Pergola is the great resort of fashion. A box at the Pergola, and a carriage for the banks of the Arno, are the indispensables, we are told, at Florence. Who has these, may eat his macaroni where he pleases—may dine for sixpence if he will, or can: it is his own affair, the world is not concerned about it—he is still a gentleman, and ranks with nobles. Who has them not—though he be derived from the loins of emperors, and dine every day off plate of gold, and with a dozen courses—is still nobody. Therefore regulate your expenditure accordingly, all ye who would be somebody. We go with M. Dumas to the opera, not, as we have said, for the music or the dancing, but because, as is the way with dramatic authors, he will there introduce us, for the sake of contrast with an institution very different from that of an operatic company—

      "Sometimes in the midst of a cavatina or a pas-de-deux, a bell with a sharp, shrill, excoriating sound, will be heard; it is the bell della misericordia. Listen: if it sound but once, it is for some ordinary accident; if twice, for one of a serious nature; if it sounds three times, it is a case of death. If you look around, you will see a slight stir in some of the boxes, and it will often happen that the person you have been speaking to, if a Florentine, will excuse himself for leaving you, will quietly take his hat and depart. You inquire what that bell means, and why it produces so strange an effect. You are told it is the bell della misericordia, and that he with whom you were speaking is a brother of the order.

      "This brotherhood of mercy is one of the noblest institutions in the world. It was founded in 1244, on occasion of the frequent pestilences which at that period desolated the town, and it has been perpetuated to the present day, without any alteration, except in its details—with none in its purely charitable spirit. It is composed of seventy-two brothers, called chiefs of the watch, who are each in service four months in the year. Of these seventy-two brothers, thirty are priests, fourteen gentlemen, and twenty-eight artists. To these, who represent the aristocratic classes and the liberal arts, are added 500 labourers and workmen, who may be said to represent the people.

      "The seat of the brotherhood is in the place del Duomo. Each brother has there, marked with his own name, a box enclosing a black robe like that of the penitents, with openings only for the eyes and mouth, in order that his good actions may have the further merit of being performed in secret. Immediately that the news of any accident or disaster is brought to the brother who is upon guard, the bell sounds its alarm, once, twice, or thrice, according to the gravity of the case; and at the sound of the bell every brother, wherever he may be, is bound to retire at the instant, and hasten to the rendezvous. There he learns what misfortune or what suffering has claimed his pious offices; he puts on his black robe and a broad hat, takes the taper in his hand, and goes forth where the voice of misery has called him. If it is some wounded man, they bear him to the hospital; if the man is dead, to a chapel: the nobleman and the day labourer, clothed with the same robe, support together the same litter, and the link which unites these two extremes of society is some sick pauper, who, knowing neither, is praying equally for both. And when these brothers of mercy have quitted the house, the children whose father they have carried out, or the wife whose husband they have borne away, have but to look around them, and always, on some worm-eaten piece of furniture, there will be found a pious alms, deposited by an unknown hand.

      "The Grand-duke himself is a member of this fraternity, and I have been assured that more than once, at the sound of that melancholy bell, he has clothed himself in the uniform of charity, and penetrated unknown, side by side with a day-labourer, to the bed's head of some dying wretch, and that his presence had afterwards СКАЧАТЬ