Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/131

 look of the whole house is neglected and squalid; the bed-rooms are bare and desolate, and a loathly reptile has been found on their walls. The waiters are unwashed, uncouth animals, reminding one of a sort of human being to be met in the streets of London or Paris—looking as if they never washed nor ever took off their clothes; as if even the knowledge of such blessings were strangers to them. The dinner is uneatable from garlic. Of course, the bill to-morrow morning will be unconscionably high.

We have come to Bergamo chiefly for the sake of the opera, and to hear Marini, a basso—boasted of as next to Lablache—but, though fine, the distance is wide between. Being fatigued, I did not go to the upper town to see the view, which is extensive, and at the setting of the sun peculiarly grand. But to the opera we went. The house is large and handsome; but the draperies and ornaments of the boxes were heavy and cumbersome; they carried, too, the usual Italian custom of having little light in their theatres, except on the stage, to such an excess, that we were nearly in the dark, and could not read our libretto. The opera was the Mosè. That which is pious to a Catholic is blasphemous to a Protestant, and the Mosè is changed, when represented in England, to Pietro l’Eremita. None of the singers