"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 been detected only by the alms he had left behind."—p. 126.
It is not to be supposed that our dramatist pursues the same direct and unadventurous route that lies open to every citizen of Paris and London. At the end of the first volume we leave him still at Florence; we open the second, and we find him and his companion Jadin, and his companion's dog Milord, standing at the port of Naples, looking out for some vessel to take them to Sicily. So that we have travels in Italy with Rome left out. Not that he did not visit Rome, but that we have no "souvenirs" of his visit here. As the book is a mere capriccio, there can be no possible objection taken to it on this score. Besides, the island of Sicily, which becomes the chief scene of his adventures, is less beaten ground. Nor do we hear much of Naples, for he quits Naples almost as soon as he had entered it. This last fact requires explanation.
M. Dumas has had the honour to be an object of terror or of animosity to crowned heads. When at Genoa, his Sardinian Majesty manifested this hostility to M. Dumas—we presume on account of his too liberal politics—by dispatching an emissary of the police to notify to him that he must immediately depart from Genoa. Which emissary of his Sardinian Majesty had no sooner delivered his royal sentence of deportation, than he extended his hand for a pour boire. Either M. Dumas must be a far more formidable person than we have any notion of, or majesty can be very nervous, or very spiteful. And now, when he is about to enter Naples——but why do we presume to relate M. Dumas's personal adventures in any other language than his own? or language as near his own as we—who are, we must confess, imperfect translators—can hope to give.
"The very evening of our arrival at Naples, Jadin and I ran to the port to enquire if by chance any vessel, whether steam-boat or sailing packet, would leave on the morrow for Sicily. As it is not the ordinary custom for travellers to go to Naples to remain there a few hours only, let me say a word on the circumstance that compelled us to this hasty departure.
"We had left Paris with the intention of traversing the whole of Italy, including Sicily and Calabria; and, putting this project into scrupulous execution, we had already visited Nice, Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Rome, when, after a sojourn of about three weeks at this last city, I had the honour to meet, at the Marquis de P——'s, our own chargé des affaires, the Count de Ludorf, the Neapolitan ambassador. As I was to leave in a few days