CHAPTER XLVII
[Queer European Manners]
We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva, that delightful citywhere accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, butwhose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident.
Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with themost enticing gimcrackery, but if one enters one of these places he isat once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this,that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again,and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. The shopkeepers of thesmaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as arethe salesmen of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins duLouvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, andinsistence have been reduced to a science.
In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic--that is anotherbad feature. I was looking in at a window at a very pretty string ofbeads, suitable for a child. I was only admiring them; I had no use forthem; I hardly ever wear beads. The shopwoman came out and offered themto me for thirty-five francs. I said it was cheap, but I did not needthem.
"Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!"
I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one of my age andsimplicity of character. She darted in and brought them out and tried toforce them into my hands, saying:
"Ah, but only see how lovely they are! Surely monsieur will take them;monsieur shall have them for thirty francs. There, I have said it--it isa loss, but one must live."
I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect my unprotectedsituation. But no, she dangled the beads in the sun before my face,exclaiming, "Ah, monsieur _cannot_ resist them!" She hung them on mycoat button, folded her hand resignedly, and said: "Gone,--and forthirty francs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but the good Godwill sanctify the sacrifice to me."
I removed them gently, returned them, and walked away, shaking my headand smiling a smile of silly embarrassment while the passers-by haltedto observe. The woman leaned out of her door, shook the beads, andscreamed after me:
"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!"
I shook my head.
"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin--but take them, only takethem."
I still retreated, still wagging my head.
"_Mon Dieu_, they shall even go for twenty-six! There, I have said it.Come!"
I wagged another negative. A nurse and a little English girl had beennear me, and were following me, now. The shopwoman ran to the nurse,thrust the beads into her hands, and said:
"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! Take them to the hotel--heshall send me the money tomorrow--next day--when he likes." Then to thechild: "When thy father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel,and thou shall have something oh so pretty!"
I was thus providentially saved. The nurse refused the beads squarelyand firmly, and that ended the matter.
The "sights" of Geneva are not numerous. I made one attempt to hunt upthe houses once inhabited by those two disagreeable people, Rousseau andCalvin, but I had no success. Then I concluded to go home. I foundit was easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town is abewildering place. I got lost in a tangle of narrow and crooked streets,and stayed lost for an hour or two. Finally I found a street whichlooked somewhat familiar, and said to myself, "Now I am at home, Ijudge." But I was wrong; this was "_Hell_ street." Presently I foundanother place which had a familiar look, and said to myself, "Now I amat home, sure." It was another error. This was "_Purgatory_ street."After a little I said, "_now_ I've got the right place, anyway ... no,this is '_Paradise_ street'; I'm further from home than I was in thebeginning." Those were queer names--Calvin was the author of them,likely. "Hell" and "Purgatory" fitted those two streets like a glove,but the "Paradise" appeared to be sarcastic.
I came out on the lake-front, at last, and then I knew where I was.I was walking along before the glittering jewelry shops when I saw acurious performance. A lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged acrossthe walk in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring himselfexactly in front of her when she got to him; he made no offer to stepout of the way; he did not apologize; he did not even notice her. Shehad to stop still and let him lounge by. I wondered if he had done thatpiece of brutality purposely. He strolled to a chair and seated himselfat a small table; two or three other males were sitting at similartables sipping sweetened water. I waited; presently a youth came by, andthis fellow got up and served him the same trick. Still, it did not seempossible that any one could do such a thing deliberately. To satisfy mycuriosity I went around the block, and, sure enough, as I approached, ata good round speed, he got up and lounged lazily across my path, foulingmy course exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight. Thisproved that his previous performances had not been accidental, butintentional.
I saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in Paris, but notfor amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed, but simply from aselfish indifference to other people's comfort and rights. One does notsee it as frequently in Paris as he might expect to, for there the lawsays, in effect, "It is the business of the weak to get out of the wayof the strong." We fine a cabman if he runs over a citizen; Paris finesthe citizen for being run over. At least so everybody says--but I sawsomething which caused me to doubt; I saw a horseman run over an oldwoman one day--the police arrested him and took him away. That looked asif they meant to punish him.
It will not do for me to find merit in American manners--for are theynot the standing butt for the jests of critical and polished Europe?Still, I must venture to claim one little matter of superiority in ourmanners; a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming asshe chooses, and she will never be molested by any man; but if a lady,unattended, walks abroad in the streets of London, even at noonday, shewill be pretty likely to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunkensailors, but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen.It is maintained that these people are not gentlemen, but are a lowersort, disguised as gentlemen. The case of Colonel Valentine Bakerobstructs that argument, for a man cannot become an officer in theBritish army except he hold the rank of gentleman. This person, findinghimself alone in a railway compartment with an unprotected girl--butit is an atrocious story, and doubtless the reader remembers it wellenough. London must have been more or less accustomed to Bakers, and theways of Bakers, else London would have been offended and excited. Bakerwas "imprisoned"--in a parlor; and he could not have been more visited,or more overwhelmed with attentions, if he had committed six murders andthen--while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after the mannerof the holy Charles Peace, of saintly memory. Arkansaw--it seems alittle indelicate to be trumpeting forth our own superiorities, andcomparisons are always odious, but still--Arkansaw would certainly havehanged Baker. I do not say she would have tried him first, but she wouldhave hanged him, anyway.
Even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested, her sexand her weakness being her sufficient protection. She will encounterless polish than she would in the old world, but she will run acrossenough humanity to make up for it.
The music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning, and we rose up andmade ready for a pretty formidable walk--to Italy; but the road was solevel that we took the train.. We lost a good deal of time by this, butit was no matter, we were not in a hurry. We were four hours going toChamb`ery. The Swiss trains go upward of three miles an hour, in places,but they are quite safe.
That aged French town of Chamb?ry was as quaint and crooked asHeilbronn. A drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back streets whichmade strolling through them very pleasant, barring the almost unbearableheat of the sun. In one of these streets, which was eight feet wide,gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses, I sawthree fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep) taking care ofthem.
From queer old-fashioned windows along the curve projected boxes ofbright flowers, an
d over the edge of one of these boxes hung the headand shoulders of a cat--asleep. The five sleeping creatures were theonly living things visible in that street. There was not a sound;absolute stillness prevailed. It was Sunday; one is not used tosuch dreamy Sundays on the continent. In our part of the town it wasdifferent that night. A regiment of brown and battered soldiers hadarrived home from Algiers, and I judged they got thirsty on the way.They sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air.
We left for Turin at ten the next morning by a railway which wasprofusely decorated with tunnels. We forgot to take a lantern along,consequently we missed all the scenery. Our compartment was full. Aponderous tow-headed Swiss woman, who put on many fine-lady airs, butwas evidently more used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in acorner seat and put her legs across into the opposite one, propping themintermediately with her up-ended valise. In the seat thus pirated, sattwo Americans, greatly incommoded by that woman's majestic coffin-cladfeet. One of them begged, politely, to remove them. She opened her wideeyes and gave him a stare, but answered nothing. By and by he proferredhis request again, with great respectfulness. She said, in good English,and in a deeply offended tone, that she had paid her passage and was notgoing to be bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners, even ifshe was alone and unprotected.
"But I have rights, also, madam. My ticket entitles me to a seat, butyou are occupying half of it."
"I will not talk with you, sir. What right have you to speak to me? Ido not know you. One would know you came from a land where there are nogentlemen. No _gentleman_ would treat a lady as you have treated me."
"I come from a region where a lady would hardly give me the sameprovocation."
"You have insulted me, sir! You have intimated that I am not a lady--andI hope I am _not_ one, after the pattern of your country."
"I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head, madam; but atthe same time I must insist--always respectfully--that you let me havemy seat."
Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs.
"I never was so insulted before! Never, never! It is shameful, it isbrutal, it is base, to bully and abuse an unprotected lady who haslost the use of her limbs and cannot put her feet to the floor withoutagony!"
"Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! I offer athousand pardons. And I offer them most sincerely. I did not know--I_could_ not know--anything was the matter. You are most welcome to theseat, and would have been from the first if I had only known. I am trulysorry it all happened, I do assure you."
But he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her. She simply sobbedand sniffed in a subdued but wholly unappeasable way for two long hours,meantime crowding the man more than ever with her undertaker-furnitureand paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble littleefforts to do something for her comfort. Then the train halted at theItalian line and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm aleg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see howshe had fooled me.
Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess it transcendsanything that was ever dreamed of before, I fancy. It sits in the midstof a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may behad for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. Thestreets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, thehouses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks thatstretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalksare about as wide as ordinary European _streets_, and are covered overwith a double arcade supported on great stone piers or columns. Onewalks from one end to the other of these spacious streets, under shelterall the time, and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shopsand the most inviting dining-houses.
There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the most wickedlyenticing shops, which is roofed with glass, high aloft overhead, andpaved with soft-toned marbles laid in graceful figures; and at nightwhen the place is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering andchatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers, it is a spectacleworth seeing.
Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings, for instance--andthey are architecturally imposing, too, as well as large. The bigsquares have big bronze monuments in them. At the hotel they gave usrooms that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match. It was well theweather required no fire in the parlor, for I think one might as wellhave tried to warm a park. The place would have a warm look, though, inany weather, for the window-curtains were of red silk damask, and thewalls were covered with the same fire-hued goods--so, also, were thefour sofas and the brigade of chairs. The furniture, the ornaments, thechandeliers, the carpets, were all new and bright and costly. We did notneed a parlor at all, but they said it belonged to the two bedrooms andwe might use it if we chose. Since it was to cost nothing, we were notaverse to using it, of course.
Turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more book-stores to thesquare rod than any other town I know of. And it has its own share ofmilitary folk. The Italian officers' uniforms are very much the mostbeautiful I have ever seen; and, as a general thing, the men in themwere as handsome as the clothes. They were not large men, but they hadfine forms, fine features, rich olive complexions, and lustrous blackeyes.
For several weeks I had been culling all the information I could aboutItaly, from tourists. The tourists were all agreed upon one thing--onemust expect to be cheated at every turn by the Italians. I took anevening walk in Turin, and presently came across a little Punch and Judyshow in one of the great squares. Twelve or fifteen people constitutedthe audience. This miniature theater was not much bigger than a man'scoffin stood on end; the upper part was open and displayed atinseled parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered for adrop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple of candle-ends aninch long; various manikins the size of dolls appeared on the stage andmade long speeches at each other, gesticulating a good deal, and theygenerally had a fight before they got through. They were worked bystrings from above, and the illusion was not perfect, for one saw notonly the strings but the brawny hand that manipulated them--and theactors and actresses all talked in the same voice, too. The audiencestood in front of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performanceheartily.
When the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started around witha small copper saucer to make a collection. I did not know how much toput in, but thought I would be guided by my predecessors. Unluckily, Ionly had two of these, and they did not help me much because they didnot put in anything. I had no Italian money, so I put in a small Swisscoin worth about ten cents. The youth finished his collection trip andemptied the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk withthe concealed manager, then he came working his way through the littlecrowd--seeking me, I thought. I had a mind to slip away, but concludedI wouldn't; I would stand my ground, and confront the villainy, whateverit was. The youth stood before me and held up that Swiss coin, sureenough, and said something. I did not understand him, but I judged hewas requiring Italian money of me. The crowd gathered close, to listen.I was irritated, and said--in English, of course:
"I know it's Swiss, but you'll take that or none. I haven't any other."
He tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again. I drew my handaway, and said:
"_No_, sir. I know all about you people. You can't play any of yourfraudful tricks on me. If there is a discount on that coin, I am sorry,but I am not going to make it good. I noticed that some of the audiencedidn't pay you anything at all. You let them go, without a word, but youcome after me because you think I'm a stranger and will put up withan extortion rather than have a scene. But you are mistaken thistime--you'll take that Swiss money or none."
The youth stood there with the coin in his fingers, nonplused andbewildered; of course he had not understood a word. An English-speakingItalian spoke up, now, and said:
"You are misunderstanding the boy. He does not mean any harm. He didnot suppose you gave him so much money purpos
ely, so he hurried back toreturn you the coin lest you might get away before you discovered yourmistake. Take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything smoothagain."
I probably blushed, then, for there was occasion. Through theinterpreter I begged the boy's pardon, but I nobly refused to take backthe ten cents. I said I was accustomed to squandering large sums in thatway--it was the kind of person I was. Then I retired to make a note tothe effect that in Italy persons connected with the drama do not cheat.
The episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter in my history.I once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman of four dollars--in achurch. It happened this way. When I was out with the Innocents Abroad,the ship stopped in the Russian port of Odessa and I went ashore, withothers, to view the town. I got separated from the rest, and wanderedabout alone, until late in the afternoon, when I entered a Greek churchto see what it was like. When I was ready to leave, I observed twowrinkled old women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall, nearthe door, with their brown palms open to receive alms. I contributed tothe nearer one, and passed out. I had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when itoccurred to me that I must remain ashore all night, as I had heard thatthe ship's business would carry her away at four o'clock and keep heraway until morning. It was a little after four now. I had come ashorewith only two pieces of money, both about the same size, but differinglargely in value--one was a French gold piece worth four dollars, theother a Turkish coin worth two cents and a half. With a sudden andhorrified misgiving, I put my hand in my pocket, now, and sure enough, Ifetched out that Turkish penny!
Here was a situation. A hotel would require pay in advance--I must walkthe street all night, and perhaps be arrested as a suspicious character.There was but one way out of the difficulty--I flew back to the church,and softly entered. There stood the old woman yet, and in the palm ofthe nearest one still lay my gold piece. I was grateful. I creptclose, feeling unspeakably mean; I got my Turkish penny ready, and wasextending a trembling hand to make the nefarious exchange, when I hearda cough behind me. I jumped back as if I had been accused, and stoodquaking while a worshiper entered and passed up the aisle.
I was there a year trying to steal that money; that is, it seemed ayear, though, of course, it must have been much less. The worshiperswent and came; there were hardly ever three in the church at once, butthere was always one or more. Every time I tried to commit my crimesomebody came in or somebody started out, and I was prevented; but atlast my opportunity came; for one moment there was nobody in the churchbut the two beggar-women and me. I whipped the gold piece out of thepoor old pauper's palm and dropped my Turkish penny in its place. Poorold thing, she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart. Then Isped away in a guilty hurry, and even when I was a mile from the churchI was still glancing back, every moment, to see if I was being pursued.
That experience has been of priceless value and benefit to me; for Iresolved then, that as long as I lived I would never again rob a blindbeggar-woman in a church; and I have always kept my word. The mostpermanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching,but of experience.