25th—Called on an Italian gentleman, to whom I had a letter of introduction, for the purpose of inquiring about lodgings. Told him I only wanted a bedroom and a studio. He informed me that I could get both (the studio fifty feet long, if I liked it), at the palace of the Marchesa—.
“Lodgings at a palace!” cried I.
“Yes, and very cheap, too,” answered my new friend.
Cheap! Can a Marchioness drive bargains? Readily. The Marchioness has not fifty pounds of your money for her whole yearly income.
“Has she any children?”
“One unmarried daughter, the Marchesina.”
“What’s that?”
“A diminutive term of endearment; it means, the little Marchioness, my dear sir, in your language.” This last reply decided me. Serene visions re Marchesina Potts swam benignant before my eyes. In an evil hour, and little thinking into what fatal embarrassments I was plunging myself, I asked for the address of the palace, and determined to lodge with the Marchioness. (Christmas-day; and no roast-beef or plum-pudding. I wish I was back in England, in spite of my brilliant prospects with the Italian aristocracy.)
26th—Went to my noble landlady’s, having dreamt all night of Polycarp the Second. (Is this a warning that I am to see that miscreant again?) Found the palace situated in a back street; an enormous building in a very deficient state of repair. The flag-stones of the courtyard grass-grown; the fountain in the middle throwing up no water, and entirely surrounded by weeds and puddles; the staircase rugged with hard dirt—but for thinking of the Marchesina, I should have run away at my first external view of my future lodgings. Saw the Marchesa. Where does all the flesh of all the old women in Italy go to? What substance absorbs, what grave receives it? Why is there no such thing as a fat lady of sixty in the whole Peninsula? Oh, what a thoroughly Italian old woman was this Marchesa! She was little, crooked, fleshless; her yellow skin had shrivelled up tight over her bones; her nose looked preternaturally aquiline, without an atom of cheek to relieve it; her hair was white; her eyes were blazing black; and to crown all, she was as stealthily civil as any watering-place landlady in England that I ever met with. She must have exercised some hideous fascination over me, for I fell into her toils, and chartered a bedroom and studio before I had been in her presence ten minutes. The bedroom was comparatively small for a palace, only about thirty feet long by twenty broad. The studio was a vasty mausoleum of a drawing-room: sixty feet by forty of marble floor, without a fire-place or a single article of furniture on any part of it, do not look comfortable in the month of February, when the snow is falling out of doors. I shall have to sit and paint in a sentry-box!
27th—Removed to my dungeon—I can call it nothing else.… I have just seen the Marchesina, and feel faint and giddy after the sight. “The little Marchioness”—to use my friend’s translation of her name—stands five feet eleven in her slippers; her hair and eyes are as black as ink; her arm is as thick as my leg; her complexion is sallow. She is as fleshy a subject as I ever remember to have met with. I know where all the old woman’s fat has gone now; it has gone to the Marchesina. My first intuitive resolve, on being introduced to this magnificent aristocrat, was as follows: “I must make friends with you, madam, for I see that you can thrash me!”
28th—The domestic life of the two noble ladies exhibits some peculiarities. I have observed that neither of them appears to possess such a thing as a gown; they are both swaddled in quantities of shapeless, dark-coloured robes, wrapped about them in a very mysterious manner. They appear to live exclusively on salad. They make salads not only of every kind of vegetable, but of bread, nuts and sponge-cakes. If the Marchesina by any accident ever set herself on fire, I feel assured that she would blaze like a beacon, from the quantity of oil she imbibes. Both the ladies keep me company in my studio, because I have got a chafing-dish of charcoal in it to preserve me from freezing, and they like to be economical in point of fire. But, besides my fire, they have their own, which they carry in their laps. An earthenware pipkin a-piece, with an arched handle, and with a small provision of burning charcoal in it, is the extraordinary portable fire that they hold on their knees all day long. I suspect the Marchesina of having a second pipkin full of live charcoal, under her robes, for the purpose of warming her feet and so forth. But of this I am not yet certain.
29th—The mighty Marchesina has proposed a subject to me to paint—a life-size portrait of herself in the character of a Sibyl. Ah, merciful Heaven! I must have another huge canvas for this! It will be another “Polycarp,” in female form! More getting up and down steps! More gallons of black paint! But I must submit. The Marchesina has been hitherto very kind, sometimes even alarmingly affectionate. Nevertheless, if I oppose, or neglect her, I feel perfectly certain that she is capable of knocking me down!—Why! why did I ever come to Italy?
January 1st—I mark this day’s entry with red ink. The new year has begun for me with one of the most outstanding adventures that ever happened to anybody—Baron Munchausen included. Let me note it down in these pages.
I had just begun this morning to make a sketch for the future Sibyl picture, when the Sibyl herself burst into my studio in a great hurry. She had her bonnet on; and was dressed for the first time, since I had seen her, in something which really looked like a petticoat.
“Industrious little man,” said the Marchesina, with an air of jocular authority, “put on your hat, and come out with me.”
Of course I obeyed directly. We were going to the nunnery church of Santa So-and-so (I am afraid of being prosecuted for libel if I write the real name), to see the live object of the last new miracle, which had set all Florence in an uproar of astonishment and admiration. This object was a poor man who had been miraculously restored from blindness, by praying to a certain statue of the Madonna. He had only pursued his devotions for two days, when he was “cured in an instant,” like the man with the toothache, on the outside cover of a certain quack medicine bottle, that I remember in England. Besides gaining his sight, he gained a great deal of money, subscribed for him by the devout rich. He was exhibited every day in the church; and it was the great sight of Florence to go and see him.
Well! we got to the church. Such a scene inside! Crowds of people; soldiers in full uniform to keep order; the organ thundering sublimely; the choir singing hosannas; clouds of incense floating through the church; devotees, some kneeling, some prostrate on their faces, wherever they could find room,—all the magnificence of the magnificent Roman Catholic worship, was displayed before us in its grandest festival garb. My companion was right, this was a sight worth seeing indeed.
The Marchesina being a person of some weight, both in respect of physical formation and social standing, made her way victoriously through the crowd, dragging me after her in triumph. At the inner extremity of the church we saw the wonder-working statue of the Madonna, raised on high, and profusely decorated with the jewels presented to it by the faithful. To get a view of the man on whom the miracle had been wrought was, however, by no means easy. He was closely surrounded by a circle of gazers five deep. ere, long, however, the indomitable Marchesina contrived to force her way and mine through every obstacle. We reached the front row, I looked eagerly under a tall man’s elbow; and saw—
Portentous powers of scoundrelism and hypocrisy! It was—yes! there was no mistaking him—it was POLYCARP THE SECOND!!!
I never really knew what it was to doubt my own eyes before; and yet there was no doubt here. There, kneeling beneath the statue of the Madonna, in an elegant pose of adoration, was my wide-awake miscreant of a model, changed to the hero of the most fashionable miracle of the day. The tears were trickling over his villainous beard, exactly as they trickled in my studio; I just detected the smell of garlic faintly predominant over the smell of incense, as I used to detect it at Rome. My sham model had turned sham blind man to all Florence, sham miracle-subject to a convent of illustrious nuns. The fellow had reached the sublime acme of rascality at a single stride.
The shock of my first recognition of him deprived me of my presence of mind. I forgot where I was, forgot all the people present, and unconsciously uttered aloud our