We had been for a long drive in the Cascine—the Central Park of the Florentines—extended into the country, and, our hands full of wild flowers, the odors of field and hedge and garden lingering in our senses, alighted at the Baptistery, attracted by the spectacle of a group dimly visible from the sunlit street. It had seemed a pretty fancy to us, this gathering all the lambs of Firenze into one visible earthly fold, and one that peopled the dusky Rotunda with images of innocence and beauty. We would make these definite and lasting by witnessing the solemn rite. A priest in a dirty gown mumbled prayers from a dog-eared book; a grimy-faced boy in a dirtier white petticoat and a dirtiest short-gown, trimmed with cotton-lace, swung a censer too indolently to disturb the foul air. A woman in clothes that were whole, but not clean, held the _bambino_. I do not like to call it a baby. It was wound from feet to arm-pits, as are all the Italian children of the lower classes, in swaddling-linen, fold upon fold, until the lower part of the body is as stiff as that of a corpse. These wrappings are never loosened during the day. I cannot answer for the fashion of their night-gear. The unhappy little mummy in question was, in complexion, a livid purple, and gasped, all the while, as in the article of death. The cradle-bands had apparently come down to it through a succession of brother and sister _bambini_, with scanty interference on the part of washerwomen, and bade fair to become its winding-sheet if not soon removed. The priest made the sign of the cross in holy water on the forehead, wrinkled like that of an old man, never pausing in his Latin rattle and swing; the acolyte gave a last, lazy toss to the censer, drawling, “A-a-men!” The woman, as nonchalant as they, covered in the child from the May air with a wadded quilt, wrapping it over the face as Hazael laid the wet cloth upon his master’s, possibly to the same end. The touching rite was disposed of, and the priest shuffled out of one door, the acolyte went whistling out of another.
The accomplished author of “Roba di Roma,” says of swaddling-bands—“There are advantages as well as disadvantages in this method of dressing infants. The child is so well-supported that it can be safely carried anyhow, without breaking its back, or distorting its limbs. It may be laid down anywhere, and even be borne on the head in its little basket without danger of its wriggling out.”
