University of Virginia Library

THE STORY.

“I had been about a month at Lucca, when it was suddenly
proposed by Crinny that we should take a vetturino together, and
go to Venice. Ninny and she had come down to dinner with a
sudden disgust for the baths—owing, perhaps, to the distinction
they had received as the only strangers in the place who were not
invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door neighbor. The
Blidgimses and their economies, in fact, had become the joke of
the season, and, as the interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed
up in the omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as
they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with some alacrity.

“By the map, it was evidently a great saving of distance to
cross the mountains to Modena, and of course a great saving of
expense, as vetturinos are paid by the mile; but the guide-books
stated that the road was rough, and the inns abominable, and
recommended to all who cared for comfort, to make a circumbendibus
by the way of Florence and Bologna. Ninny declared
she could live on bread and apples, however, and Crinny delighted
in mountain air—in short, economy carried it, and after three
days' chaffering with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off
up the banks of the Lima—without the blessing of Jacomo, the
head waiter!

“We soon left the bright little river, and struck into the
mountains, and, as the carriage crept on very slowly, I relieved
the horses of my weight and walked on. The ladies did the
same thing whenever they came in sight of an orchard, and, for
the first day, Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting

along very comfortably. The first night's lodging was execrable,
but as the driver assured us it was the best on the route,
we saved our tempers for the worst, and, the next day, began to
penetrate a country that looked deserted of man, and curst with
uninhabitable sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked
on alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying misfortune,
and I was giving it credit for one redeeming quality—that
of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny Blidgimses's—when both the
ladies began to show symptoms of illness. It was not long after
noon, and we were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending
over the horizon before and behind us, and neither shed nor
shelter, bush, wall or tree, within reach of the eye. The only
habitation we had seen since morning, was a wretched hovel, where
the horses were fed at noon, and the albergo, where we should
pass the night, was distant several hours—a long up-hill stretch,
on which the pace of the horses could not possibly be mended.
The ladies were bent double in the carriage, and said they could
not possibly go on. Going back was out of the question. The
readiest service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry on to
the inn, to prepare for their reception.

“Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged—one horse in advance
of a pair. I took off the leader, and galloped away.

“Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and stomachs
must be made cholera-proof to stand a perpetual diet of green
apples, even with no epidemic in the air. So I had a very clear
idea of the remedies that would be required on their arrival.

“At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple of hours.
It was a large stone barrack, intended, no doubt, as was the road
we had travelled, for military uses. A thick stone wall surrounded
it, and it stood in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the

last eminence before arriving, not another object could be descried
within a horizon of twenty miles diameter, and a whitish
soil of baked clay, browned here and there by a bit of scanty
herbage, was foreground and middle and background to the pleasant
picture. The site of the barrack had probably been determined
by the only spring within many miles, and, by the dryness
without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived for a monopoly
by the besieged.

“I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared out `casa!'
`cameriere!' `botega!' till I was frightened at my own voice.

“No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection of the
stone steps, and mounted, from an empty stable which occupied
the ground floor (Italian fashion), to the second story, which
seemed equally uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and
wooden settees, and dirty platters—the first signs of life. On
the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and, with these
two musical instruments I played a tune which I was sure would
find ears, if ears there were on the premises. And presently a
heavy foot was heard on the stair above, and, with a sonorous
yawn, descended mine host—dirty and stolid—a goodly pattern of
the `fat weed on Lethe's wharf,' as you would meet in a century.
He had been taking his siesta, and his wife had had a colpo di
sole, and was confined helplessly to her bed. The man John was
out tending sheep, and he, the host, was, vicariously, cook, waiter,
and chambermaid. What might be the pleasure of il signore?

“My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled, and the pot
put over, and then to fall into a brown study.

“Two fine ladies with the cholera—two days' journey from a
physician—a fat old Italian landlord for nurse and sole counsellor
—nobody who could understand a word they uttered, except

myself, and not a drug nor a ministering petticoat within available
limits! Then the doors of the chambers were without
latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great room was the
one article of furniture, and the house was so still in the midst of
that great waste, that all sounds and movements whatever, must
be of common cognisance! Should I be discharging my duty, to
ladies under my care, to leave them to this dirty old man? Should
I offer my own attendance as constant nurse, and would the service
be accepted? How, in the name of Robinson Crusoe, were
these delicate damsels to be `done for'?

“As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as to have something
Italian to bring home, I had bought at Naples the costume
of a sister of charity, and in it I had done all my masquerading
for three carnivals. It was among my baggage, and it occurred
to me whether I had not better take the landlord into my confidence,
and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, disguised in coif
and petticoat. No—for he had a mustache, and spoke nothing
but Italian. Should I do it myself?

“I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony of dilemma.

In the course of half an hour I had made up my mind. I called
to Boniface, who was watching the boiling pot, and made a clean
breast to him of my impending distresses, aiding his comprehension
by such eye-water as landlords require. He readily
undertook the necessary lies, brought out his store of brandy,
added a second bed to one of the apartments, and promised faithfully
to bear my sex in mind, and treat me with the reverence
due my cross and rosary. I then tore out a leaf of the grocery
book, and wrote with my pencil a note to this effect, to be
delivered to the ladies on their arrival:—

“The delivery of this was subject, of course, to the condition
of the ladies when they should arrive, though I had a presentiment
they were in for a serious business.

“And, true to my boding, they did arrive, exceedingly ill.
An hour earlier than I had looked for him, the vetturino came up
with foaming horses at a tugging trot, frightened half out of his
senses. The ladies were dying, he swore by all the saints, before
he dismounted. He tore open the carriage door, shouted
for il signore and the landlord, and had carried both the groaning
girls up stairs in his arms, before fat Boniface, who had been
killing a sheep in the stable, could wash his hands and come out
to him. To his violent indignation, the landlord's first care was
to unstrap the baggage and take off my portmanteau, condescending
to give him neither why nor wherefore, and, as it mounted the
stairs on the broad shoulders of my faithful ally, it was followed

by a string of oaths such as can rattle off from nothing but the
voluble tongue of an Italian.

“I immediately despatched the note by the host, requesting
him to come back and `do my dress,' and, in half an hour, sister
Benedetta's troublesome toilet was achieved, and my old Abigail
walked around me, rubbing his hands, and swore I was a `meraviglia
di belleza.' The lower part of my face was covered by the
linen coif, and the forehead was almost completely concealed in
the plain put-away of a `false front;' and, unless the Blidgimses
had reconnoitred my nose and eyes very carefully, I was sure
of my disguise. The improvements in my figure were, unluckily,
fixtures in the dress, for it was very hot; but, by the landlord's
account, they were very becoming. Do you believe the old dog
tried to kiss me?

“The groans of Ninny, meantime, resounded through the
house, for, as I expected, she had the worst of it. Her exclamations
of pain were broken up, I could also hear, by sentences in a
sort of spiteful monotone, answered in regular `humphs!' by
Crinny—Crinny never talking except to astonish, and being as
habitually crisp to her half-witted sister as she was fluent to those
who were capable of surprise. Fearing that some disapprobation
of myself might find its way to Ninny's lips, and for several other
reasons which occurred to me, I thought it best to give the ladies
another half hour to themselves; and, by way of testing my incognito,
bustled about in the presence of the vetturino, warming oil
and mixing brandies-and-water, and getting used to the suffocation
of my petticoats—for you have no idea how intolerably hot
they are, with trowsers under.

“Quite assured, at last, I knocked at the door.

“`That's his nun!' said Ninny, after listening an instant.

“`Come in!—that is to say, entrez!' feebly murmured Crinny.

“They were both in bed, rolled up like pocket-handkerchiefs;
but Ninny had found strength to bandbox her wig and
abbo, and array herself in a nightcap with an exceedingly broad
frill. But I must not trench upon the `secrets of the prison-house.'
You are a bachelor, and the Blidgimses are still in a
`world of hope.'

“I walked in and leaned over each of them, and whispered a
benedicite, felt their pulses, and made signs that I understood
their complaints and they need not trouble themselves to explain;
and forthwith I commenced operations by giving them their grog
(which they swallowed without making faces, by-the-by), and, as
they relaxed their postures a little, I got one foot at a time hung
over to me from the side of the bed into the pail of hot water,
and set them to rubbing themselves with the warm oil, while I
vigorously bathed their extremities. Crinny, as I very well
knew, had but five-and-twenty words of French, just sufficient to
hint at her wants, and Ninny spoke only such English as Heaven
pleased, so I played the ministering angel in safe silence—listening
to my praises, however, for I handled Ninny's irregular
doigts du pied with a tenderness that pleased her.

“Well—you know what the cholera is. I knew that, at the
Hotel Dieu of Paris, women who had not been intemperate were
oftenest cured by whiskey punches, and, as brandy toddies were
the nearest approach of which the resources of the place admitted,
I plied my patients with brandy toddy. In the weak state
of their stomachs, it produced, of course, a delirious intoxication,
and, as I began very early in the morning, there were no lucid
intervals in which my incognito might be endangered. My ministrations
were, consequently, very much facilitated, and, after

the second day (when I really thought the poor girls would die),
we fell into a very regular course of hospital life, and, for one, I
found it very entertaining. Quite impressed with the idea that
sister Bellidettor (as Ninny called me) understood not a word of
English, they discoursed to please themselves; and I was obliged
to get a book, to excuse, even to their tipsy comprehension, my
outbreaks of laughter. Crinny spouted poetry and sobbed about
Washington Irving, who, she thought, should have been her lover;
and Ninny sat up in bed, and, with a small glass she had in the
back of her hair-brush, tried on her abbo at every possible angle,
always ending by making signs to sister Bellidettor to come and
comb her hair! There was a long, slender moustache, remaining
on the back of the bald crown, and, after putting this into my
hand, with the hair-brush, she sat with a smile of delight till she
found my brushing did not come round to the front!

“`Why don't you brush this lock?' she cried, `this—and this
—and this!' making passes from her shining skull down to her
waist, as if, in every one, she had a handful of hair! And so,
for an hour together, I threaded these imaginary locks, beginning
where they were rooted `long time ago,' and passing the brush
off to the length of my arm—the cranium, when I had done,
looking like a balloon of shot silk, its smooth surface was so purpled
with the friction of the bristles. Poor Ninny! She has
great temptation to tipple, I think—that is, `if Macassar won't
bring back the lost chevelure!'

“About the fifth day, the ladies began to show signs of convalescence,
and it became necessary to reduce their potations.
Of course they grew less entertaining, and I was obliged to be
much more on my guard. Crinny fell from her inspiration, and
Ninny from her complacency, and they came down to their previous

condition of damaged spinsters, prim and peevish. `Needs
must' that I should `play out the play,' however, and I abated
none of my petits soins for their comfort, laying out very large
anticipations of their grateful acknowledgments for my dramatic
chivalry, devotion, and delicacy!”

“Well—they are ungrateful!” said I, interrupting F— for
the first time in his story.

“Now, are not they? They should at least, since they deny
me my honors, pay me for my services as maid-of-all-work, nurse,
hair-dresser, and apothecary! Well, if I hear of their abusing
me again, I'll send in my bills. Wouldn't you? But to wind
up this long story.

“I thought that perhaps there might be some little circumstances,
connected with my attentions, which would look best at a
distance, and that it would be more delicate to go on and take
leave at Modena as sister Benedetta, and rejoin them the next
morning in hose and doublet as before—reserving to some future
period the clearing up of my apparently recreant desertion. On
the seventh morning, therefore, I instructed old Giuseppe, the
landlord, to send in his bill to the ladies while I was dressing, and
give notice to the vetturino that he was to take the holy sister to
Modena in the place of il signore, who had gone on before.

“Crinny and Ninny were their own reciprocal dressing-maids,
but Crinny's fingers had weakened by sickness much more than
her sister's waist had diminished, and, in the midst of shaving, in
my own room, I was called to `finish doing' Ninny, who backed
up to me with her mouth full of pins, and the breath, for the time
being, quite expelled from her body. As I was straining, very
red in the face, at the critical hook, Giuseppe knocked at the
door, with the bill, and the lack of an interpreter to dispute the

charges, brought up the memory of the supposed `absquatulator'
with no very grateful odor. Before I could finish Miss Ninny
and get out of the room, I heard myself charged with more
abominations, mental and personal, than the monster that would
have made the fortune of Trinculo. Crinny counted down half
the money, and attempted, by very expressive signs, to impress
upon Giuseppe that it was enough; but the oily palm of the old
publican was patiently held out for more, and she at last paid the
full demand, fairly crying with vexation.

“Quite sick of the new and divers functions to which I had
been serving an apprenticeship in my black petticoat, I took my
place in the vettura, and dropped veil, to be sulky in one lump
as far as Modena. I would willingly have stopped my ears, but,
after wearing out their indignation at the unabated charges of old
Giuseppe, the ladies took up the subject of the expected donation
to the charity-fund of sister Benedetta, and their expedients,
to get rid of it, occupied (very amusingly to me) the greater part
of a day's travel. They made up their minds at last, that half a
dollar would be as much as I could expect for my week's attendance,
and Crinny requested that she should not be interrupted
while she thought out the French for saying as much, when we
should come to the parting.

“I was sitting quietly in the corner of the vettura, the next
day, felicitating myself on the success of my masquerade, when
we suddenly came to a halt at the gate of Modena, and the deganiere
put his moustache in at the window, with `passaporti,
signori!'

“Murder! thought I—here's a difficulty I never provided for!

“The ladies handed out their paper, and I thrust my hand
through the slit in the side of my dress and pulled mine from my

pocket. As of course you know, it is the business of this gatekeeper
to compare every traveller with the description given of
him in his passport. He read those of the Blidgimses and looked
at them—all right. I sat still while he opened mine, thinking it
possible he might not care to read the description of a sister of
charity. But to my dismay he did—and opened his eyes, and
looked again into the carriage.

“`Aspetta, caro!' said I, for I saw it was of no use. I gathered
up my bombazine and stepped out into the road. There were
a dozen soldiers and two or three loungers sitting on a long
bench in the shade of the gateway. The officer read through
the description once more, and then turned to me with the look
of a functionary who had detected a culprit. I began to pull up
my petticoat. The soldiers took their pipes out of their mouths
and uttered the Italian `keck' of surprise. When I had got as
far as the knee, however, I came to the rolled-up trowsers, and
the officer joined in the sudden uproar of laughter. I pulled my
black petticoat over my head, and stood in my waistcoat and
shirt-sleeves, and bowed to the merry official. The Blidgimses,
to my surprise, uttered no exclamation, but I had forgotten my
coif. When that was unpinned, and my whiskers came to light,
their screams became alarming. The vetturino ran for water,
the soldiers started to their feet, and, in the midst of the excitement,
I ordered down my baggage and resumed my coat and cap,
and repacked, under lock and key, the sister Benedetta. And not
quite ready to encounter the Blidgimses, I walked on to the
hotel and left the vetturino to bring on the ladies at his leisure.

“Of course I had no control over accidents, and this exposure
was unlucky; but, if I had had time to let myself down softly on
the subject, don't you see it would have been quite a different

sort of an affair? I parted company from the old girls at Modena,
however, and they were obliged to hire a man-servant who
spoke English and Italian, and probably the expense of that was
added to my iniquities. Anyhow, abusing me this way is very
ungrateful of these Blidgimses. Now, isn't it?”