Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Travel -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography
The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the night, which
is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds in it: through a dark
passage, up two steps, down four, past a pump, across a balcony, and next
door to the stable. The other sleeping apartments are large and lofty;
each with two small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the windows, with
red and white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is already
laid in it for three; and the napkins are folded in cocked-hat fashion.
The floors are of red tile. There are no carpets, and not much furniture
to speak of; but there is abundance of looking-glass, and there are large
vases under glass shades, filled with artificial flowers; and there are
plenty of clocks. The whole party are in motion. The brave Courier, in
particular, is everywhere: looking after the beds, having wine poured
down his throat by his dear brother the landlord, and picking up green
cucumbers—always cucumbers; Heaven knows where he gets them—with which he
walks about, one in each hand, like truncheons.
Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup; there are very large
loaves—one apiece; a fish; four dishes afterwards; some poultry
afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no lack of wine. There is not much
in the dishes; but they are very good, and always ready instantly. When
it is nearly dark, the brave Courier, having eaten the two cucumbers,
sliced up in the contents of a pretty large decanter of oil, and another
of vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and proposes a visit to the
Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down upon the court-yard of the
inn. Off we go; and very solemn and grand it is, in the dim light: so
dim at last, that the polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble
little bit of candle in his hand, to grope among the tombs with—and looks
among the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his
own.
Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants of the inn
are supping in the open air, at a great table; the dish, a stew of meat
and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in the iron cauldron it was
boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and are very merry; merrier
than the gentleman with the red beard, who is playing billiards in the
light room on the left of the yard, where shadows, with cues in their
hands, and cigars in their mouths, cross and recross the window,
constantly. Still the thin Curé walks up and down alone, with his book
and umbrella. And there he walks, and there the billiard-balls rattle,
long after we are fast asleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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