University of Virginia Library

53. LETTER LIII.

Montefiascone. — We have stopped for the night
at the hotel of this place, so renowned for its wine —
the remnant of a bottle of which stands, at this moment,
twinkling between me and my French companions.
The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and
left us in the room where sat Jean Defoucris, the merry
German monk, who died of excess in drinking the
same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered
flask. The story is told more fully in the French
guide-books. A prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrimage
to Rome, sent forward his servant with orders to
mark every tavern where the wine was good with the
word est, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at
this hotel, the monk saw the signal thrice written over
the door — Est! Est! Est? He put up his mule,
and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His servant
wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of
St. Florian: —

“Est, Est, Est!” is the motto upon the sign of the
hotel to this day.

In wandering about Viterbo in search of amusement,
while the horses were baiting, I stumbled upon the
shop of an antiquary. After looking over his medals,
Etruscan vases, cameos, &c., a very interesting collection,
I inquired into the state of trade for such
things in Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy
looking old man, with his pockets worn quite out with
the habit of thrusting his hands into them, and about
his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso expression
of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He
kept also a small café adjoining his shop, into which
we passed, as he shrugged his shoulders at my question.
I had wondered to find a vender of costly curiosities

in a town of such poverty, and I was not surprised
at the sad fortunes which had followed upon his
enterprise. They were a base herd, he said, of the
people, utterly ignorant of the value of the precious
objects he had for sale, and he had been compelled to
open a café, and degrade himself by waiting on them
for a contemptible crazie worth of coffee, while his
lovely antiquities lay unappreciated within. The old
gentleman was eloquent upon his misfortunes. He
had not been long in trade, and had collected his museum
originally for his own amusement. He was an
odd specimen, in a small way, of a man who was quite
above his sphere, and suffered for his superiority. I
bought a pretty intaglio, and bad him farewell, after
an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a
friend.

Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo,
and we walked up most of the long and gentle
ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy plants for which
it is famous, and looking out sharply for the brigands
with which it is always infested. English carriages
are constantly robbed on this part of the route of late.
The robbers are met usually in parties of ten and
twelve, and, a week before we passed, Lady Berwick
(the widow of an English nobleman, and a sister of the
famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in
broad mid-day. The excessive distress among the
peasantry of these misgoverned states accounts for
these things, and one only wonders why there is not
even more robbing among such a starving population.
This mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below
it, are spoken of in the æneid: “Cimini cum monte
locum,” etc. There is an ancient tradition, that in the
crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills, there was
formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise
of the water, and certain authors state that, when the
lake is clear, the ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.

The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain
above Baceano, on the sixth day of our journey, and,
by its clear golden flood, we saw the dome of St. Peter's,
at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid
the campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descended
into the vast plain, and traversed its gentle undulations
for two or three hours. With the forenoon well
advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and
saw the home of Raphael, a noble chateau on the side
of a hill, near the river, and, in the little plain between,
the first peach-trees we had seen, in full blossom.
The tomb of Nero is on one side of the road,
before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly
painted and staring restaurant, where the modern Roman
cockneys drive for punch and ices. The bridge
of Pontemolle, by which we passed into the immediate
suburb of Rome, was the ancient Pons æmilius, and
here Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to
join Catiline in his camp. It was on the same bridge,
too, that Constantine saw his famous vision, and gained
his victory over the tyrant Maxentius.

Two miles over the Via Flaminia, between garden
walls that were ornamented with sculpture and inscription
in the time of Augustus, brought us to the Porta
del Popolo. The square within this noble gate is
modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before
you, as far away as you can see into the heart of
the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in
the centre, the facades of two handsome churches face
you as you enter, and on the right and left are gardens
and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and
sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, driving
out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian
mount, the splendid troops of the pope are on guard,
and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome
swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea.
All this disappoints while it impresses the stranger.
He has come to Rome — but it was old Rome that he
had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of
her temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes
of her orators, poets, and patriots, the majestic relies
of the once mistress of the world, are the features in
his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate to
a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a
whiskered officer of customs; and in the place of a
venerable Belisarius begging an obolus in classic Latin,
he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy lazzaroni
entreating for a baioch in the name of the Madonna,
and in effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso,
and reads nothing but French signs, and sees all the
familiar wares of his own country exposed for sale,
and every other person on the pave is an Englishman,
with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and
with an hour at the Dogama where his baggage is
turned inside out by a snuffy old man who speaks
French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter
addresses him in his own language, whatever it may
be; he goes to bed under Parisian curtains, and tries
to dream of the Rome he could not realize while
awake.