Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/285

Rh earn five cents a day. We have not been able to find an apartment, so we have rooms at the rustic locanda, which is on the piazza, clean and airy, and where may be studied all the humors of the place. There is the fountain where come the girls in their corset, long shift-sleeves, and colored petticoat, the silver needle in their fine hair; attractive they look from my window, for the dirt disappears in distance. Near, it not dismays their lovers, who help them to adjust the water-vase on their heads (N. B. no husband does this). All the dandies of Rieti in all kinds of queer uniforms are congregated below; at the barber’s, the druggist’s, the caffé, they sit and digest the copious slander, chief product of this, as of every little hive of men. The baronesses and countesses, in the extreme of Italian undress, are peeping through the blinds; at half-past seven, if the band plays, they will put on their best dresses (alas! mongrel French fashions prevail here), and parade, fanning themselves whether the weather be hot or cold, on foot, for the Corso of Rieti is nominal. At present the scene is varied by presence of the Spanish force, who promise to stay only three days; and I hope they will not, for they eat everything up like locusts. For the moment, it pleases to see their foreign features, and hear the noble sounds of their language. We have performed our social duties; have called on the handsome doctor’s wife, whom we found ironing in her antechamber; ——, the Gonfaloniere’s sister, who had just had a child, and received us in her chamber; and on the father, guardian of the beautifully placed monastery of St. Antonio, who insisted on making us excellent coffee, which we must take under the shade of the magnificent cypresses, for women must not enter, ‘only,’ said he chuckling, ‘Gar-