Roccaraso, October 1, 1898.

Last Monday morning, having decided quite suddenly to go to Scanno, we applied to the sindaco for horses and a guide.

“For to-morrow, yes, I will arrange everything; for to-day it is not possible.”

“Why? The weather is fine, it is only nine o’clock. If we start at noon we shall be in time.”

“Pazienza, Signori! I tell you it is not possible. The horses are at Pietro Anzieri threshing oats. The guide has gone to sell a pig at Castel di Sangro; it is market day.”

“There must be other horses. Do you mean to say there is but one man in Roccaraso who knows the road to Scanno? Even Mariuccia has been there.”

“Doubtless! many of our women went there last year on a pilgrimage. It is not easy to find a man who knows the way: it is a horrible mountain trail. I myself, Signors, born in Roccaraso, have not seen Scanno.”

“We shall start at twelve to-day, if we have to walk and take Mariuccia for a guide.”

I was sorry for the sindaco, a progressive man, with a dim sense at the back of his head of a future for Roccaraso if the mad forestieri take a fancy to it. He pulled his long ginger whiskers and considered.

“There is Fra Diavolo, brother of him I would send with you; possibly he knows the way, but I take no responsibility.”

“Send Fra Diavolo and the horses at noon, and the responsibility shall be upon our own heads.” He shook his head, pained but indulgent. The ways of the forestieri are becoming known to him, and their lack of that virtue of old people and old peoples, pazienza!

At quarter to twelve Fra Diavolo was at our door, with a vicious mule and pack-saddle for me, a weak-kneed, blind horse with prehistoric trappings and saddle-bags for J. We soon left the dazzling white road, struck across a grassy valley, and entered a wild, stony gorge, which reminded us of the Colorado Canyon. The path is the worst I have seen outside of Palestine. We soon dismounted and let Fra Diavolo lead our beasts. He had to be very careful, lest they should break their legs. The walls of the ravine towered on either side of us; to the left the granite rocks, which form the summit, seemed to have been shaped into Gothic battlements, towers, and buttresses. I could hardly believe that nature, and not one of the Sangallo family (the famous architects), had been the designer. The trees are of primeval growth. The gorge is crossed by open plateaus and glens covered with ancient oaks and beeches. At three o’clock we halted in a fairy dell beside a spring. The water ran through a trough made from the hollowed trunk of a tree. A pink-nosed sheep was drinking—the only brave sheep I ever saw,—I had a hand-to-hand battle with him to get my share of the water. Afterwards J. and I sat down to rest and contemplated the trail, which here divided into two.

“Which is the way to Scanno?” we asked our guide.

“Who knows, Signori?” said Fra Diavolo.

“Do not you?”

“No more than yourselves.”

“Why did you say you could show us the way?”

“With the tongue one may go to Sardinia.”

“But we have been walking three hours; for the last two we have met no living creature except these sheep.”

“Where there are sheep there will be a shepherd,” said Fra Diavolo.

“Povera rondinella, povera rondinella!” The familiar air was played on a shepherd’s pipe.

“What did I say?” growled Fra Diavolo, a really cross person.

We came upon the shepherd a minute later. He sat with his back against an oak playing on a pipe; near him a goat with one hind leg in splint cropped the grass. They both seemed astounded at seeing us.

“The way to Scanno, figlio mio?”

“This is not the path. Where have the Signori come from? Roccaraso? it is not possible! You have come by a trail only fit for goats and asses. Why did you not take the mule-path? That is easy enough.”

“Well, for certain excellent reasons we did not take the mule-path, but we are going to Scanno all the same.”

“Truly? Then take the lower path—of an unimaginable badness! With good luck you may reach Scanno by Ave Maria.”

Ave Maria is a little puzzling till you learn that it varies with the season of the year, and is always celebrated fifteen minutes after sunset.

By this time the gorge was in shadow, and though it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and we knew we should never see it again, we pushed on as fast as we could. At sunset we toiled up the high hill on which Scanno is perched. It is an old, gray, walled town; the gates stood open. At the fountain just outside the gateway a dozen women and girls were drawing water. The moment I saw them I cried out, “They look like Greeks.” I can hardly tell what gave the impression. J. says it was the head-dress; I think it was their expression. Their bearing was as free and noble as the Roccarasans’, but less friendly. They took no notice of us, showed nothing of that kindly animation and curiosity we usually find, though travellers are scarce in these parts. I only know one person who has been here—Enrico Coleman, the painter. I question if either Mr. Baedeker or Mr. Hare have seen Scanno. Edward Lear was here in 1856; his visit is the last I have found described in guide-bookery. Here, I believe, he met that old person of Abruzzi, “so blind that he could not his foot see. When they said, ‘That’s your toe,’ he replied, ‘Is that so?’ that doubtful old man of Abruzzi.”

He had a certain stoicism, you see, like our silent women at the fountain. Before going to the inn we stopped at a delicious gray stone church near the gate, pushed aside the heavy leathern curtain, and looked in. The church, decorated for a festa, blazing with candles, was full of kneeling people; three priests in superb vestments were officiating at the altar. The air was gray with the smoke of incense; the cracked organ and harsh-voiced choristers were in full blast. Somehow, the sumptuousness of this vespers service was extraordinarily moving. Coming suddenly upon it after our pilgrimage over that lonely trail made it doubly impressive.

The inn was filthier than we should have believed possible; our rooms had not been made up since the last occupants departed. The food was incredibly bad; even the spaghetti, dressed with rancid oil, was uneatable. The poor landlady was so mortified at our not eating things, and brought in the spaghetti with such an air of triumph, that we waited until her back was turned before we threw it out of the window into a little, dark back street, where the dogs devoured it. We supped on the ends of bread and cheese from our saddle-bags, and raw eggs,—the cooked ones, like the spaghetti, tasted of rancid oil. One of the first things to learn, if you mean to travel in the byways of the world, is how to take raw eggs. If you are sure of your glass, break your egg into it, put a pinch of salt on the tongue, and swallow white and yolk whole. If the glass is doubtful, you must go back to first principles, and suck your eggs as the rats do; if they are fresh, like the Scanno eggs, there is no better way of taking them.

We were so tired with our six hours’ tramp that we went to bed at half-past nine—and got up again at ten! Sleep was impossible; the pleasures of the chase only were ours that night. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could on chairs, wrapped up in the rugs without which we have learned never to travel. In the dim watches of the night J. invented a portable bed, drawing the design with a burnt match in the back of Baedeker the faithless, who only says that Scanno is the most interesting point in the Abruzzi, and makes foolish remarks about how high it is, the circumference of its lake, and such dry details. While J. was designing the portable bed, I planned a foot-note to Baedeker, about Scanno.

We made out better at breakfast than at supper. Remembering the saying, “An egg, an apple, and a nut, you may take from any slut,” we ordered boiled eggs, potatoes roasted in the ashes, and some raw apples. Afterwards we walked about the town and visited the market-place, where we had a good chance to see the strange costume of the women. The head-dress is a curious black turban covering the whole head; the hair showing behind the ears and below the turban is tightly braided with bright-colored wool—red, green, yellow. I fancy each color has its significance; perhaps one is for maids, one for matrons, one for widows. The short skirt of heavy green cloth plaited at the waist is very full, the bodice of dark blue cloth has large leg-of-mutton sleeves and fastens with pretty silver buttons. The high linen chemise showing at the neck is edged with handsome lace (real, of course, they quite properly scorn the machine-made variety). Nobody offered to make friends with us; the women held themselves proudly aloof: this was fine, but not encouraging. The whole place is grave, gray, dignified; there are some important-looking houses, one belonging to a rich merchant has an air of solid well-being and thrift. Next time we shall take the advice of the sindaco and have pazienza! If we had given him twenty-four hours’ notice, he would have sent word to the Mayor of Scanno that we were coming, and we should not have found things as we did at the inn. We also should have had “to pay through the nose,” so perhaps it was just as well to see Scanno for once au naturel.

We walked to the lake of Scanno, a mile from the town, an irregular sheet of water with misty reflections of the bare gray mountains towering above it and the tender willows on its banks. In the little chapel of “L’Annunziata,” on the edge of the lake, we found hundreds of votive offerings, silver hearts on one side of the shrine, on the other discarded crutches and trusses, hung up by grateful sufferers miraculously cured of their ailments. These reminded us of the temple of Juno at Veii. You know the great Etruscan town near Rome, where we saw and bought those lovely Etruscan terra-cotta heads, votive offerings which the priests of Juno buried in a trench behind the temple when the walls were too full to hold more. I wonder what the priests of Scanno do with the overplus of crutches?

Outside the chapel we found raspberries, just like our red raspberries, only black; they are delicious. The lake and the raspberries refreshed us somewhat. The spell of the place—far from the beaten track of travel, where we were neither wanted nor expected—was very strong, but we were so worn that we shrank from the terrors of another night at the inn, and our boots were so knocked up by yesterday’s climb that we could not face the hardships of the trail. We consulted Fra Diavolo; he was gloomier than ever.

“If the forestieri are so fastidious, they might go to Naples, the giornaliere—diligence—will start in an hour for Anversa, where they can get the train.”

“Ma come si fa? What will become of you, the horse, and the mule?”

“Yesterday I brought these abominable animals as well as yourselves safely over that infamous devil’s road. To-day I return by the proper road, fit for a Christian, not merely for goats and asses,” he began angrily; then a thought struck him and he changed his tune:

“It is true there are greater dangers in going by a strange road than by one, however poor, that one is acquainted with. The animals are the sindaco’s, and more valuable than the forestieri realize. Would they abandon me in this strange paese, where I have no relatives, not even a friend? Hearts of stone! At least they must pay a man to help lead back these poor, abandoned ones, which they may despise, but which the sindaco doubtless finds useful.”

To see Fra Diavolo work himself into this state of righteous indignation was well worth the price we paid a man to help convey the blind horse and the lame mule back to Roccaraso. As the diligence did not leave for an hour, we saw the caravan start, Fra Diavolo riding the horse, the Scannan following upon the mule.

The carriage road leading down from the town is quite as steep, if a trifle smoother, than the trail; on one side there is a sheer drop of a hundred feet to a stony gorge below. The driver of the giornaliere was very drunk; the harness of one horse, a restive gray, was made almost entirely of an old clothes-line. As soon as we started the gray sat down like a circus horse, his front feet firmly planted in the road before him, whereupon the clothes-line traces broke.

“What did I say, Manfredo?” cried the driver to the guard. “Would it not have been a sin to put a good harness on this cavallaccio maledetto? I tell you he has never been driven before. Would it be sensible to waste good leather traces upon this brutta bestia?”

“Zitto, Orlando!” said the guard, who was sober.

I am afraid I screamed to be let down from the box seat.

“Neither horse, harness, nor driver is fit for the road if the voyagers wish to reach Anversa alive,” J. said firmly; “send them back immediately and provide others, or I will appeal to the sindaco.”

A little, dried-up man scrambled out from the stuffy interior of the giornaliere and joined the fray.

“The Signor Marchese is right, Manfredo; send Orlando back with that hangman’s brute. The return diligence will be here in ten minutes; we will take one of their animals, and you yourself must drive.” We waited a full half hour for the incoming stage. In the crowd of loiterers that quickly gathered we recognized the man we had paid to help Fra Diavolo lead the animals back to Roccaraso. “What have you done with the mule of his Excellency?” J. asked. The fellow pointed to the trail. “He is on his way home. Fra Diavolo found he could manage both beasts very well alone.”

When the other stage arrived, Manfredo persuaded its driver to exchange one of his horses with us, and Orlando Furioso to change places with him. A fat arch-priest put down the window and looked out.

“What in the name of all the saints is the matter with that evil horse?”

“Illustrissimo, the animal is like one of yourselves,—he does not like to work,” said the thin little man, a lawyer from Scanno.

“Grazie, grazie (thank you),” said the arch-priest, taking the chaff in good part.

Once we had started, everything went like magic. The drive from Scanno to Anversa is as fine as the Cornice or the Sorrento drives. It is mostly down hill, and took us just three hours; the return trip takes five. I had been almost afraid to sit outside lest, after our sleepless night, I should go to sleep and fall off, but the great gray mountains and the grim gray gorges kept me awake. The road runs nearly all the way beside the river Saggittario, which has more moods than one would have imagined possible in a single thread of water. Sometimes it dashes, white and angry, over a rough bottom between rocky sides; then it spreads out into clear pools, “alive with trout,” the lawyer said. Sometimes it is green and full of fight, sometimes brown, still, and lazy. We saw an eagle light on a crag far over our heads. We were really dazed with the wonders we had seen by the time we reached Anversa, where we took the train. We had to go all around Robin Hood’s barn, so that we did not get home to Roccaraso till after dark.

On our way from the station we were overtaken by Mariuccia, who was eager to hear how we had fared.

“AimÉ, ’Gnor’, when I saw Fra Diavolo return with the animals and without your illustrious selves I was much afflicted! The inhabitants of Scanno sono gente mal educata, e di nessuna fede (people without breeding or good faith). The sindaco himself was much alarmed, good man; I must take the news to his house that you have returned safely.”

“What is that you are carrying on your head, Mariuccia?”

“’Gnora, it is a little chest.” It was the most fascinating little cinque cento chest I ever saw, half the usual size, finely carved, and looking as if it might be meant to hold jewels or treasure, as indeed it was.

“To whom does it belong? Where are you taking it?” I touched it with my bare hand: it was encrusted with earth.

“It belongs to one who is forgotten. I am taking it to the house next yours. It is for una povera creatura morta (a poor dead child). The mother will give the cassetta a thorough cleaning, and it will be as good as when it was first put in the ground.”

“Good-night, Mariuccia! it is cold, we must hurry.”

“Andiamo presto: Let us hasten; I too am in fretta (a hurry); we must carry the infant to the church to-night.”

There was no getting rid of Mariuccia; the lid of the chest clap-clapped with every step she took; the thing smelt of mortality.

“Where did the chest come from?”

“’Gnora, a few years ago when they built the railway an ancient cemetery was disturbed. The bones of those who had been buried were all put into the new graveyard, and such of the coffins as were whole were stored in that old ruined church. When the very poor have need, they help themselves. I am taking this to my cousin, but I would not have it known by the neighbors, so I waited till dark, and, as you see, I am taking it home by the quietest way.”

We were at last at our own door.

“Buona notte, Mariuccia.”

“Felicissima notte, ’Gnora.”

J. says things have changed very little since he made his first trip through the Abruzzi in the early eighties. He with two other artists went first to Saracinesco, where they stayed at the house of Belisario, the son of an old model of Fortuny’s (the great Spanish painter). They had heard about the place from another Roman model called Fagiolo or the Bean. When Fagiolo was a boy, his father gave him a large bag of beans one morning and sent him out to plant a field. It was a fine, bright day, and the boy, meeting other boys, decided to put off his work till afternoon and went off birds’-nesting. Suddenly the sun began to set and he realized that he had done nothing with the beans. He hurried to the field, and digging one deep hole buried all the beans; then he went home.

“You are late, my son. Where have you been?” asked the father.

“There were many beans; I have planted them all,” said the boy. By and by, when it was time for vegetables to come up, the father was very much troubled that nothing came up in the bean-field. One day he discovered in the farthest corner a perfect thicket of tangled, spindly beans. From that day the boy was known as Fagiolo.

The three artists were invited by Fagiolo to a feast, which J. describes as the most primitive he has ever shared. They found the family all gathered in the large living-room of a rather superior peasant’s house. The floor was of mother earth, otherwise the room resembled our own glorious kitchen at Roccaraso; there were golden-brown bladders of lard and strings of garlic hanging from the ceiling; in front of the open hearth were hand-wrought andirons with little cages at the top in which the pipkins of food were kept hot. Fagiolo made them welcome, and his wife having announced that the polenta was ready, the husband literally laid the board. The guests and the family seated themselves, the children on wooden stools, the grown-up people on rush-bottomed chairs, and Fagiolo took a large board from the corner. With a knife he scraped off the dried meal sticking to it out at the door, the fowls gathering to feed upon the scrapings. Then he passed his hand across the board and, finding it comparatively smooth, laid it upon the knees of the company, who were sitting in a circle. Next he took from the crane, where it hung over the fire, a large three-legged iron pot of polenta (hasty pudding) and emptied it upon the board. His wife with a long pudding-stick spread out the mush to the proper thickness, then each person staked out his claim by drawing a circle in the polenta with a leaden spoon. The smallest child, they noticed, drew the biggest circle, and J. confesses to having drawn the smallest. Next Fagiolo took from the cage in the andiron, where it had been keeping warm, a saucepan filled with snails stewed in brown gravy, and helped each person to a share of the snails, putting it down carefully within the limits of the circle. That was all the feast, except the inevitable vino di paese, which really takes the place of meat with these people.

By the advice of their host, Belisario, the artists had given their money to Fagiolo to keep, as he was known to be honest, and would be less likely to be suspected of having it than Belisario, in whose house they were staying. After the snail feast Fagiolo went off to the inn. Flattered by the honor the strangers had done him, he drank more than was good for him, and began to boast of the money, several hundred francs, the painters had confided to him. The sum grew in telling to several thousand, and the news getting to Belisario that Fagiolo had boasted at the inn, he begged the artists to depart without delay, saying that he could no longer be responsible for their safety.

“The signori must depart, but to-day, at once; and yet they must appear not to depart.”

“Explain yourself. How is it possible to depart and to appear not to depart?”

“Ma, È semplicissimo! The illustrious ones go out to sketch every day, is it not so? Well, to-day they go as usual, but they do not return, and these dogs will believe that they of Olevano have robbed them. The signori must make haste to reach Tivoli before dark; there are brigands about; the carabinieri are on the lookout for them.”

“Nobody ever troubles artists.”

“For a good reason, they are not usually worth meddling with. If it had not been for that cabbage-headed imbecile, Fagiolo! Ask him if I tell you the truth.”

Fagiolo was even more frightened than Belisario. He actually wept.

“Per caritÀ, my Signors, depart! depart! If you hope to see another day, if you would not see your poor Fagiolo, who has served you faithfully, put in prison for your murder.”

The three artists started, carrying their sketching kits, wearing their red berrettas (flat red caps, something like Tam o’ Shanters). They took the precaution to tuck their soft felt hats inside their waistcoats, and, leaving the rest of their traps to be sent after them, set out merrily on their sixteen-mile tramp to Tivoli. The road was most beguiling; it leads through Vicovaro along the river Anio—down which floated the mother of Romulus with her immortal twins—past “Cold Digentia,” where the winter birding nets were set on Horace’s Sabine farm. Is it wonderful that they loitered? that they even delayed to make un leggero bozzetto (just a note) of a small gray castello perched like an eagle’s nest on the top of a high hill? A white path zigzagged up to the gate, an olive-grove clustered at the foot of the hill, a row of stone pines ran along the sky line. The mere “bozzetti” grew into serious sketches. All at once they saw outlined against the sky a long procession of peasants coming back from their work in the fields below. The women—riding in pairs upon the patient mules and asses, hung with bells that jingled at every step—were singing the litany, the men made the responses in their gruff voices.

“Ave Maria, gratia plena.”

“Ora pro nobis!” then came the guttural “angk, angk!” of the men, and the blows of their heavy sticks upon the backs of the poor beasts.

“They are singing the Ave Maria, which means that it must be late,” said the eldest of the three artists, the Spaniard, Catherez. “We must be going.”

It was nearly sunset, and they were not half way to Tivoli. They exchanged their berrettas for their felt hats, and began to walk in good earnest. Soon after dark they met a band of carabinieri, who brought them to a halt.

“Where do you come from?”

“Saracinesco.”

“That is so likely! From what inn?”

“It should be known to you that there is no inn there where one may sleep. We stayed at the house of Belisario.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Tivoli.”

It began to rain. They thought they had answered enough questions and were impatient to be off. J. was the first to move. A guard caught him by the coat and began to feel of him suspiciously.

“What have you got there?” He pulled out the innocent berretta. “A disguise? What do honest men want with disguises? Have you any papers to prove that what you say is true?”

They had all taken out sportsmen’s licenses before leaving Rome, but, unfortunately, they had mixed the papers up. Ricardo Villegas loftily presented a license describing J.

“How is this? English? five foot eleven? fair complexion? By the mass, these papers are stolen! This man is no Inglese. He is not above five feet seven, and he is as dark as a Moor. In the name of the King, I arrest you.”

They were marched off to Tivoli, to spend the night in the vast, bare guard-room, where every hour the grave carabinieri came and went in squads, as the guards were changed. In the morning they were allowed to send telegrams to their respective consuls in Rome, and by ten o’clock they were set at liberty, with a warning to be more careful in future.

The artists suspected, justly or unjustly, that the weather had much to do with their arrest. It was a miserable evening, when three possible brigands in the hand might be reckoned as worth more than a whole band in the bush!