“_February 14th._--I began another picture to-day, after all my resolutions to the contrary, the subject, two Roman shepherds playing at ‘_Morra_’, sitting on a fallen pillar, a third _contadino_, in a cloak, looking on. I posed my first model, putting a light background to him, the effect being capital, he coming rich and dusky against it. He soon understood I wanted energy thrown into the action. I shall delight in this subject, because the hands figure so conspicuously in the game.
“_February 15th._--I went up alone to the Trinità to choose the other young man for my ‘Morra,’ and, after a little inspection of the group of lolling Romagnoli, gave the apple to one with a finely-cut profile and black hair, the other models, male and female, clustering round to hear, and many bystanders and the Zouave sentry, hard by, looking on.”
On one evening in this eventful Roman period I had the opportunity of seeing the famous race of the riderless horses (the _barberi_), which closed the Carnival doings. The impression remains with me quite vividly to this day. The colour, the movement; the fast-deepening twilight; the historic associations of that vast Piazza del Popolo, where I see the great obelisk retaining, on its upper part, the last flush from the west; the impetuous waters of the fountains at its base in cool shadow; St. Peter’s dome away to the left--this is the setting. Then I hear the clatter of the dragoon’s horses as the detachment forms up for clearing the course. The stands, at the foot of the obelisk, are full, some of the crowd in carnival costume and with masks. A sharp word of command rings out in the chilly air. Away go the dragoons, down the narrow Corso and back, at full gallop, splitting the surging crowd with theatrical effect. The line is clear. Now comes the moment of expectancy! At that unique starting post, the obelisk upon which Moses in Egypt may have looked as upon an interesting monument of antiquity in pre-Exodus days, there appear eleven highly-nervous barbs, tricked out with plumes and painted with white spots and stripes. The convicts who lead them in (each man, one may say, carrying his life in his hand) are trying, with iron grip, to keep their horses quiet, for the spiked balls and other irritants are now unfastened and dangling loose from the horses’ backs. But one terrified beast comes on “kicking against the pricks” already. The whole pack become wild. The more they plunge, the more the balls bang and prick. One furious creature, wrenching itself free, whirls round in the wrong direction. But there is no time to lose; the restraining rope must be cut. A gun booms; there is a shout and clapping of hands. Ten of the horses, with heads down, get off in a bunch, shooting straight as arrows for the Corso; the eleventh slips on the cobbles, rolls over and, recovering itself, tears after its pals, straining every nerve. I hear a voice shout “_E capace di vincere!_” (“He is fit to win!”) and in an instant the lot are engulfed in that dark, narrow street, the squibs on their backs going off like pistol shots, and the crackling bits of metallic tinsel, getting detached, fly back in a shower of light. The sparks from the iron heels splash out in red fire through the dusk. The course is just one mile--the whole length of the straight street. At the winning post a great sheet is stretched across the way, through which some of the horses burst, to be captured some days afterwards while roaming about the open spaces of the Campagna. It is the dense crowd, forming two walls along the course, that forces the horses to keep the centre. This was the last of the _barberi_. They were more frightened than hurt, yet I am not sorry that these races have been abolished.