Two persons place themselves opposite each other, holding their right hands closed before them. They then simultaneously and with a sudden gesture throw out their hands, some of the fingers being extended, and others shut up on the palm,—each calling out in a loud voice, at the same moment, the number he guesses the fingers extended by himself and his adversary to make. If neither cry out aright, or if both cry out aright, nothing is gained or lost; but if only one guess the true number, he wins a point. Thus, if one throw out four fingers and the other two, he who cries out six makes a point, unless the other cry out the same number. The points are generally five, though sometimes they are doubled, and as they are made, they are marked by the left hand, which, during the whole game, is held stiffly in the air at about the shoulders' height, one finger being extended for every point. When the partito is won, the winner cries out, "Fatto!" or "Guadagnato!" or "Vinto!" or else strikes his hands across each other in sign of triumph. This last sign is also used when Double Mora is played, to indicate that five points are made.
So universal is this game in Rome, that the very beggars play away their earnings at it. It was only yesterday, as I came out of the gallery of the Capitol, that I saw two who had stopped screaming for "baiocchi per amor di Dio," to play pauls against each other at Mora. One, a cripple, supported himself against a column, and the other, with his ragged cloak slung on his shoulder, stood opposite him. They staked a paul each time with the utmost nonchalance, and played with an earnestness and rapidity which showed that they were old hands at it, while the coachmen from their boxes cracked their whips, and jeered and joked them, and the shabby circle around them cheered them on. I stopped to see the result, and found that the cripple won two successive games. But his cloaked antagonist bore his losses like a hero, and when all was over, he did his best with the strangers issuing from the Capitol to line his pockets for a new chance.
Nothing is more simple and apparently easy than Mora, yet to play it well requires quickness of perception and readiness in the calculation of chances. As each player, of course, knows how many fingers he himself throws out, the main point is to guess the number of fingers thrown by his opponent, and to add the two instantaneously together. A player of skill will soon detect the favorite numbers of his antagonist, and it is curious to see how remarkably clever some of them are in divining, from the movement of the hand, the number to be thrown. The game is always played with great vivacity, the hands being flung out with vehemence, and the numbers shouted at the full pitch of the voice, so as to be heard at a considerable distance. It is from the sudden opening of the fingers, while the hands are in the air, that the old Roman phrase, micare digitis, "to flash with the fingers," is derived.
A bottle of wine is generally the stake; and round the osterias, of a festa-day, when the game is played after the blood has been heated and the nerves strained by previous potations, the regular volleyed explosions of "Tre! Cinque! Otto! Tutti!" are often interrupted by hot discussions. But these are generally settled peacefully by the bystanders, who act as umpires,—and the excitement goes off in talk. The question arises almost invariably upon the number of fingers flashed out; for an unscrupulous player has great opportunities of cheating, by holding a finger half extended, so as to be able to close or open it afterwards according to circumstances; but sometimes the losing party will dispute as to the number called out. The thumb is the father of all evil at Mora, it being often impossible to say whether it was intended to be closed or not, and an unskilful player is easily deceived in this matter by a clever one. When "Tutti" is called, all the fingers, thumb and all, must be extended, and then it is an even chance that a discussion will take place as to whether the thumb was out. Sometimes, when the blood is hot, and one of the parties has been losing, violent quarrels will arise, which the umpires cannot decide, and, in very rare cases, knives are drawn and blood is spilled. Generally these disputes end in nothing, and, often as I have seen this game, I have never been a spectator of any quarrel, though discussions numberless I have heard. But, beyond vague stories by foreigners, in which I put no confidence, the vivacity of the Italians easily leading persons unacquainted with their characters to mistake a very peaceable talk for a violent quarrel, I know of only one case that ended tragically. There a savage quarrel, begun at Mora, was with difficulty pacified by the bystanders, and one of the parties withdrew to an osteria to drink with his companions. But while he was there, the rage which had been smothered, but not extinguished, in the breast of his antagonist, blazed out anew. Rushing at the other, as he sat by the table of the osteria, he attacked him fiercely with his knife. The friends of both parties started at once to their feet, to interpose and tear them apart; but before they could reach them, one of the combatants dropped bleeding and dying on the floor, and the other fled like a maniac from the room.
This readiness of the Italians to use the knife, for the settlement of every dispute, is generally attributed by foreigners to the passionateness of their nature; but I am inclined to believe that it also results from their entire distrust of the possibility of legal redress in the courts. Where courts are organized as they are in Naples, who but a fool would trust to them? Open tribunals, where justice should be impartially administered, would soon check private assassinations; and were there more honest and efficient police courts, there would be far fewer knives drawn. The Englishman invokes the aid of the law, knowing that he can count upon prompt justice; take that belief from him, he, too, like Harry Gow, would "fight for his own hand." In the half-organized society of the less civilized parts of the United States, the pistol and bowie-knife are as frequent arbiters of disputes as the stiletto is among the Italians. But it would be a gross error to argue from this, that the Americans are violent and passionate by nature; for, among the same people in the older States, where justice is cheaply and strictly administered, the pistol and bowie-knife are almost unknown. Despotism and slavery nurse the passions of men; and wherever law is loose, or courts are venal, public justice assumes the shape of private vengeance. The farther south one goes in Italy, the more frequent is violence and the more unrepressed are the passions. Compare Piedmont with Naples, and the difference is immense. The dregs of vice and violence settle to the south. Rome is worse than Tuscany, and Naples worse than Rome,—not so much because of the nature of the people, as of the government and the laws.
But to return to Mora. As I was walking out beyond the Porta San Giovanni the other day, I heard the most ingenious and consolatory periphrasis for a defeat that it was ever my good-fortune to hear; and, as it shows the peculiar humor of the Romans, it may here have a place. Two of a party of contadini had been playing at Mora, the stakes being, as usual, a bottle of wine, and each, in turn, had lost and won. A lively and jocose discussion now arose between the friends on the one side and the players on the other,—the former claiming that each of the latter was to pay his bottle of wine for the game he lost, (to be drunk, of course, by all,) and the latter insisting, that, as one loss offset the other, nothing was to be paid by either. As I passed, one of the players was speaking. "Il primo partito," he said, "ho guadagnato io; e poi, nel secondo,"—here a pause,—"ho perso la vittoria": "The first game, I won; the second, I–lost the victory." And with this happy periphrasis, our friend admitted his defeat. I could not but think how much better it would have been for the French, if this ingenious mode of adjusting with the English the Battle of Waterloo had ever occurred to them. To admit that they were defeated was of course impossible; but to acknowledge that they "lost the victory" would by no means have been humiliating. This would have soothed their irritable national vanity, prevented many heart-burnings, saved long and idle arguments and terrible "kicking against the pricks," and rendered a friendly alliance possible.
No game has a better pedigree than Mora. It was played by the Egyptians more than two thousand years before the Christian era. In the paintings at Thebes and in the temples of Beni-Hassan, seated figures may be seen playing it,—some keeping their reckoning with the left hand uplifted,—some striking off the game with both hands, to show that it was won,—and, in a word, using the same gestures as the modern Romans. From Egypt it was introduced into Greece. The Romans brought it from Greece at an early period, and it has existed among them ever since, having suffered apparently no alteration. Its ancient Roman name was Micatio, and to