From the observatory of the Collegio Romano a signal is given daily, at twelve o’clock, for the firing of the noon cannon from the Castle of San Angelo. As we entered the Piazza di Spagna on our return, the dull boom shook the air. The streets were full of people, the day being a fine one in early Spring, and, as happens every day in the year, every man, from the _cocchière_ upon his box, to the _élégant_ strolling along the shady side of the square to digest his eleven o’clock breakfast, looked at his watch. Not that the Romans are a punctual people, or moderately industrious. “The man who makes haste, dies early,” is one of their mottoes. “_Dolce far niente_” belongs to them by virtue of tongue and practice. “Lazzaroni” should be spelled with one z, and include, according to the sense thus conveyed to English ears, tens of thousands besides professional beggars.
There is no pleasanter place in which to be lazy than in this bewitching old city. Our own life there was an idyl, rounded and pure, such as does not come twice to the same mortal. The climate, they would have had us believe was the bane of confiding strangers, was to us all blessedness. Not one of us was ill for a day while we resided in the cozy “_appartamento_” in Via San Sebastiano; nor was there a death, that winter, among American visitors and residents in Rome. For myself, the soft air was curative to the sore lungs; a delicious sedative that quieted the nerves and brought the boon, long and vainly sought—Sleep! My cough left me within a month, not to return while we remained in Italy. We made the natural mistake of tarrying too late in the Spring, unwilling to leave scenes so fair, fraught with such food for Memory and for Imagination. After mid-April, the noon-day heat was debilitating, and I suffered appreciable diminution of vigor.
I do not apologize for these personal details. Knowing how eagerly invalids, and those who have invalid friends, crave information respecting the means that have restored health to others, I write frankly of my own experience in quest of the lost treasure. It would be strange if I could think of Rome and our home there without felt and uttered gratitude. Convalescence was, with me, less a rally of energies to battle with disease and weakness, than a gradual return, by ways of pleasantness and paths of peace, to physical tranquillity, and through rest, to strength. I hardly comprehended, for awhile, that I was really getting better; that I might be well again in time. I only knew that to breathe was no longer pain, nor to live labor that taxed the powers of body and spirit to the utmost. There was so much to draw me away from the contemplation of my own griefs and ailments that I could have supposed the new existence a delusion, my amendment a trick of fancy. I forgot to think of and watch myself. I had all winter but one return—and that a slight one, induced by unusual exertion—of the hæmorrhages that had alarmed us, from time to time, for two years preceding our departure from America. The angel of healing had touched me, and I knew it not.