Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/199

 192 though deadly white, I recognised him in an instant. I was afterwards told that I uttered a loud shriek, and was found stretched senseless on the floor of my balcony. I recollect nothing further of what passed until I found myself on my bed in my darkened room, with anxious faces around me, my hand resting in that of my beloved uncle. I saw on my uncle’s face how ill I had been. It was some days before I was allowed to ask any questions. I then learned that I had been long and dangerously ill. I recollected all about Count F’s assassination; but when I told my uncle that I had seen him, he smiled, and gently told me it was the effect of fever—nothing more.”

“Was it so, do you think, grandmamma?” asked I.

“My daughter, were I to die this moment,” she answered, with energy, “I would swear that I saw the ghost of Count F.”

I knew that my grandmother’s marriage had not been a happy one. I asked her if she had ever discovered the name of the perpetrator of this crime. She grew very pale, and, stooping down, left a cold kiss on my forehead, saying,

“I did, soon after your father’s birth; but never ask me to tell it you!”

.

one thinks of the pompous damsels who in England claim the title of Lady’s-Maid, or of the coquettish and pert French aspirant to that situation, an Italian “cameriera” is almost unworthy of such a distinction. In the first place, she is not above making herself generally useful; she does not consider it violates the dignity of her calling to “fare il servizis,” that is, to sweep and clean her lady’s bedroom, as well as to adorn her lady’s person. Secondly, she can not only dress hair, make dresses, and trim bonnets and caps, but she washes and irons, and sews; she can embroider, and plait straw, and she can, on an emergency, even repair her master’s trousers and make his waistcoats. In the last place, and this is what most absolutely degrades her from such a dignity, she is content with the most moderate wages. For five, four, nay three, dollars a month she will undertake all these arduous duties.

In her ordinary dress she is, I will confess, as a general rule, far less elegant than her sister abigails of France and England; but when, on an occasion of any very solemn “outing,” she does dress herself in her best, she excels them, in as much as she wears her clothes in a far more aristocratic manner, and her speech, gestures, and bearing are far more lady-like. The extreme courtesy and good-humour, which is as a vein of fine ore in the Tuscan character, is universal. The Teresinas, and Virginias, and Gelorgias have it no less than the owners of the grand historic names. A Tuscan is rarely violent or ill-tempered. The women are perhaps more so than the men; but it is not usual in either sex. I have heard many foreigners speak of them as dishonest, and there may be a set of servants who devote themselves exclusively to the service of passers-by who are so; but, judging from my own experience, they are quite the contrary.

There is a certain feudality of feeling, if I may so speak, among Tuscan servants. They identify themselves with a family, and like to remain in its service. It is a common custom among Italians to remember their servants in their wills, and it is an ambition which the true unsophisticated Tuscan servant always acknowledges, to remain many years with the same master. It is curious to hear how, after a man or woman has been a certain time in a situation, he or she always speaks in the first person plural as regards all the belongings of the family. It is always “we,” and “ours,” and “us.” There is much more familiarity than with us between masters and servants, and no other nation has retained so inveterate a republican equality in all these respects as the Italians. Social freedom and political bondage have been the two sides of the shield here, as the reverse is seen in England and America. My maid Virginia, for instance, going out to enjoy herself at the Carnival, does not hesitate to ask me to lend her any trifling ornament or finish which her dress may require. I confess I like this confidence in one’s good nature, this reliance on a bond of common humanity. The “thou” with which servants are invariably addressed has also an affectionateness in its sound (exclusively appropriated as it is to them and to the dearest and closest family ties), which insensibly softens and modifies our intercourse with them.

An Italian lady’s-maid has a great love of outdoor amusements. She must always have her Sunday “passeggiata.” The “feste” (saints’ days) must not be interfered with. She will walk all day long at such times to see the dresses and carriages in the Cascine, or along the Lung ’Arno, and to be seen. Then there is the Carnival. She stipulates, on engaging with a new mistress, that she may go once to the theatre, and once to the “neglione” (the masked ball at a theatre is so called), and to the Corso. The Corso is the drive along certain streets, on fixed days, of all the nobility, gentry, and commonalty of Florence, in their finest equipages, dresses, and liveries. Some of the carriages are full of flowers, some of bonbons, some carriages are full of masks, in some there are strange, and grotesque costumes. The carriages go at a foot-pace, the pedestrians throng the streets, and every balcony and window is lined with people. How strange it would seem to us if a sober English lady’s-maid knocked at the door of the sitting-room, and asked leave to show herself, previously to going to a masked ball, as my maid has just done.

“Come in, Virginia.”

And enter Virginia, a tall fair girl, with her bright hair raised from her forehead over a cushion, and then plaited and adorned with pearls and flowers in true rococo style, a tiny coquettish Swiss straw hat is perched on one side of her head; she wears a black velvet laced boddice, trimmed with red ribbons and pearl buttons; beneath the boddice is a white full muslin chemisette up to the throat, showing the fair proportions of a well-made bust, a white muslin shirt, trimmed with black and red, very full, and rather short (be