It rained from dawn to sundown of the next day. Not with melancholy persistency, as in Florence, as if the weather were put out by contract and time no object, but in passionate, fitful showers, making rivers of the streets, separated by intervals of sobbing and moaning winds and angry spits of rain-drops. We stayed in-doors, and, under compulsion, rested. The fires burned better as the chimneys warmed to their work; we unpacked a trunk or two; wrote letters and watched, amused and curious, the proceedings of two men and two women who took eight hours to stretch and tack down the carpet in our _salon_. Each time one of us peeped, or sauntered in to note and report progress, all four of the work-people intermitted their ceaseless jargon to nod and smile, and say “_Domane!_” Young travelled in Italy before he wrote “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!”
Our morrow was brilliantly clear, and freshness like the dewy breath of early Spring was in the air. Our first visit was, of course, to our bankers, and while Caput went in to inquire for letters (and to learn, I may add, that the story of the thirteen American corpses was unsupported by the presence, then or during the entire season, of a single one), we lay back among the carriage-cushions, feeling that we drank in the sunshine at every pore—enjoying as children or Italians might the various and delightful features of the scene.
The sunlight—clarified of all vaporous grossness by the departed tempest—in color, the purest amber; in touch and play beneficent as fairy balm, was everywhere. Upon the worn stones paving the Piazza di Spagna, and upon the Bernini fountain (one of them), the Barcaccia, at the foot of the Spanish Steps,—a boat, commemorating the mimic naval battles held here by Domitian, when the Piazza was a theatre enclosing an artificial lake. Upon beggars lolling along the tawny-gray Steps, and contadini—boys, women, and girls—in fantastic costume, attitudinizing to catch the eye of a chance artist. Upon the column, with the Virgin’s statue on top, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and David at the base, rusty tears, from unsuspected iron veins, oozing out of the sides,—decreed by Pius IX. in honor of his pet dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Upon the big, dingy College of the Propaganda, founded in 1622, Barberini bees in bas-relief conspicuous among the architectural ornaments. More of Bernini’s work. Urban VIII., his patron, being a Barberini. Upon the Trinita di Monti at the top of the Spanish Staircase, where the nuns sing like imprisoned canaries—as sweetly and as monotonously—on Sabbath afternoons, and all the world goes to hear them. Upon the glittering windows of shops and hotels fronting the Piazza—the centre of English and American colonies in Rome. Upon the white teeth and brown faces of boys—some beautiful as cherubs—who held up great trays of violets for us to buy, and wedded forever our memories of the Piazza and this morning with violet scent. Upon the wrinkles and rags of old women—some hideous as hags—who piped entreaties that we would “_per l’amore di Dio_” make a selection from their stock of Venetian beads, Naples lava trinkets, and Sorrento wood-work. Upon the portly figure and bland countenance of Mr. Hooker, coming out to welcome us to the city which has given him a home for thirty years, and which he has made home-like to so many of his country-people. Lastly, and to our fancy most brightly, upon the faces of my Florence angel of mercy and her family party, alighting from their carriage at the door of the bank, and hurrying up to exchange greetings with us.