"Fior di limone A limonare mi son messo a fare Per non aver fortuna nell'amore.'" O lemon flower, I am obliged to take to lemon-selling The girls replied saucily to the same tune, "Giovinottino dalle pretensioni Volevi cento scudi nelle mane Con cento scudi c'ho meglio occasione." O pretentious youth! You want my hundred scudi; But with a hundred scudi I have better chances. This roused the ire of the young men, who with very loud voices struck up, telling them in a very uncompromising stornello, to go to their mothers for consolation, for they were not going to marry, and if they were they would not choose wives from them. At this a shower of bundles were aimed at the daring songsters. The young girls' heads met in a cluster conspiring vengeance, and then they burst out in the shrillest of voices,— "Ora zitto ti dico addio E ti dico in verità; Dove tu puoi trovar." Now be quiet, I say Addio in right earnest, For a heart like mine where will you find again? A shout of "Bravi" greeted this bit of defiance. It is true that one young man tried a reply, but was only met with a shout of laughter from the girls, who exclaimed, "Oh, listen to him! how he sings out of tune," and the solitary champion of the round table finished up suddenly out of the key, and retired discomfited. The youths next started a more complimentary strain and sang the following rispetto. I give it in Italian to show the difference in form and metre between stornelli and rispetti. Stornelli are always triplets, the first line being short, and having usually reference to some flower or fruit. Rispetti are in eight lines, the last two repeating in different words the idea of the preceding couplet. "Tu pensi che nel mare non ci sia rena, Tu pensi lo cor mio non ne abbia pena, This was very well received, and after a little time the girls sang very sweetly the following,— "Era di Maggio se vi ricordate Che noi ci cominciammo a ben volere, Erano fiorite le rose nell' orto Siete il trionfo delle dame belle." In a minute At this point the strains of an accordion were heard, and cries of, "Ah! bravo! Giovanni of Piteglio has brought his music." Garibaldi's hymn of war rose in shouts in the moonlight, till the walls of the old courtyard echoed again, and the accordion player put all his strength into the accompaniment. The ceste being almost empty by this time, a few of the young men and women left their elders to finish, and, inspired by the music, plunged into the mazes of the trescone, the national dance of the Tuscans; and at ten o'clock we left them still "putting forth the charm Of woven paces and of weaving hands” in the silver lights and dark shades of the moonlit old courtyard by the dropping fountain, CHAPTER XXXIII. THE VIRGIN'S BIRTHDAY. September 8.-This is a great day in the mountains, and indeed all over Italy. The people of the Nook, not having a festa of their own (it being only a hamlet), are gone in all directions to join other parishes. Some to San Marcello, where there are fireworks and a fiera (like our fair, a collection of itinerary salesmen of all kinds). Fiore Andrucci, whose only little girl is named Celestina, has taken her and his wife to a neighbouring village where is a shrine to Santa Celestina, that the child may have her patron saint's benediction. In the darkness of last night a party of six of the Lenini relations departed in Pietro's cart to go to a shrine called the "Eremita," some miles beyond the Bagni di Lucca. That neat little housewife, Matilde, had been very busy baking bread and making cakes, to take with them on their picnic-pilgrimage. She says the Eremita is a large church hollowed out of the solid rock in one of the Lucchese mountains. It was made as a shrine for a miraculous image of the Madonna which was found sculptured in stone by a holy hermit who once had his cell. there. The church is open during the whole of September, and parties of pilgrims are coming and going all the month. As they are mostly from distant towns, the women are allowed to sleep in the church; for the men there is a little hut near. September 10.-The pilgrims have returned; Matilde who is sitting on her aja in front of her house door, is very pleased to tell us all her adventures. She places chairs for us, and taking up her work, a new dress she is making for herself, plunges at once into the subject. "Oh, signora!" she exclaims, "such a night we had; there was a crowd as great as if Mass were being celebrated, and when we were all shut into the church at night, you may believe we got little sleep-we poor women. There are only a few wooden benches, and of course they were taken by the first, all the others had to sit on the floor, leaning against the pillars or the wall, or to lie down flat on the stones. Some rolled |