Part 89

Just what had happened; the man had fallen from the window and had been carried dead to the hospital!

Perhaps you don't know what a tremendous part the lottery plays in Italy; it is to an Italian what sausages and beer are to a German. An Italian will spend his last soldo to buy a ticket. He simply cannot live without it. The numbers are drawn every Saturday morning at twelve o'clock, and are instantly exposed in all the tobacco-shops in the town.

An hour after, whether lucky or unlucky, the Italian buys a new ticket for the following week, and lives on hope and dreams until the next Saturday; and when any event happens or any dream comes to him he searches in the dream-book for a number corresponding to them, and he is off like lightning to buy a ticket. I was told that the Marquis Rudini, on hearing that his mother had met her death in a railroad accident, sought in the dream-book for the number attached to "railroad accident," and bought a ticket before going to get her remains.

A winning terno brings its lucky owner I don't know exactly how much-- but I know it is something enormous.

Well, this would be a terno worth having. My dream, coming as it did straight from the blue, must be infallibility itself, and we felt perfectly sure that the three magical numbers would bring a fortune for every one of us, and we all sent out and bought tickets with all the money we could spare.

This was on Thursday, and we should have to wait two whole days before we became the roaring millionaires we certainly were going to be, and we strutted about thinking what presents we would make, what jewels we would buy; in fact, how we would use our fortunes! We sat up late at night discussing the wisest and best way to invest our money, and I could not sleep for fear of a contre-coup in the shape of another dream. For instance, if I should dream of a cat miauling on a roof, it would mean disappointment. It would never do to give fate a chance like that!

Imagine with what feverish excitement we awoke on that Saturday, and how we watched the numbers, gazing from the carriage-windows, at the tobacco- shop! Well, not one of those numbers came out! We drove home in silence, with our feathers all drooping. However, we had had the sensation of being millionaires for those two days (ecstatic but short!), and felt that we had been defrauded by an unjust and cruel fate.

Unsympathetic Mr. Marshal said, mockingly: "How could you expect anything else, when you go on excursions with the Marquis Maurriti [that was the name of Garibaldi's friend]? You might have known that you would come to grief."

"Unfeeling man! Why should we come to grief?" we cried with impatience.

"Because, did you not know that he has the mal'occhio [the evil eye]? I thought every one knew it," said he, making signs with his fingers to counteract the effect of the devil and all his works. We said indignantly, "If every one knows it, why were we not told?" Our tormentor continued; "There is no doubt about it, and nothing can better prove that people are afraid of him than that when, the other evening, he gave a soirée and invited all Rome, only half a dozen people out of some five hundred ventured to go. The mountains of sandwiches, the cart-loads of cakes, the seas of lemonade, set forth on the supper-table, were attacked only by the courageous few."

"How dreadful to have such a thing said about you! Who can prove that he or any one else has got the evil eye?"

"Sometimes there is no foundation for the report; perhaps some one, out of spite or jealousy, spreads the rumor, and there you are."

"Does it not need more than a rumor?" I asked.

"Not much; but we must not talk about him, or something dreadful will happen to us."

"Do you also believe in such rank nonsense?" I asked.

"Of course I do!" Mr. Marshal replied. "You can see for yourself. If you had not gone with him your horses would not have run away, and you would surely have got your million."

"Well, we have escaped death and destruction and the million; perhaps we ought to be thankful. But in his case I would go and shut myself up in a monastery and have done with it."

"No monastery would take him. No brotherhood would brother him."

"You can't make me believe in the evil eye. Neither shall I ever believe in dreams again."

You will hardly believe how many acquaintances I have made here. I think I know all Rome, from the Quirinal and the Vatican down. The Haseltines know nearly every one, and whom they don't know I do.

We were invited to see the Colosseum and the Forum illuminations, and were asked to go to the Villino, which stands in the gardens of the Palace of the Caesars, just over the Forum.

That there would be a very select company we had been told; but we did not expect to see King Victor Emanuel, Prince Umberto, and Princess Margherita, who, with their numerous suites and many invited guests, quite filled the small rooms of the Villino. I was presented to them all.

I found the Princess perfectly bewitching and charming beyond words; the Prince was very amiable, and the King royally indifferent and visibly bored. That sums up my impressions.

At the risk of committing lèse majesté, I must say that the King is more than plain. He has the most enormous mustaches, wide-open eyes, and a very gruff, military voice, speaking little, but staring much. The Prince, whom I had seen in Paris during the Exposition, talked mostly about Paris and of his admiration of the Emperor and Empress. The Princess was fascinating, and captivated me on the spot by her affability and her natural and sweet manner.

The Colosseum looked rather theatrical in the glare of the red and green Bengal lights, and I think it lost a great deal of its dignity and grandeur by this cheap method of illumination.

I met there a Spanish gentleman whom I used to know in Paris years ago. He was at that time the Marquis de Lema, a middle-aged beau, who was always ready to fill any gap in society where a noble marquis was needed.

He began life, strange to say, as a journalist, and as such made himself so useful to the ex-King of Naples that the King, to reward him, hired the famous Farnesina Palace for ninety-nine years. Here the former Marquis, who is now Duke di Ripalda, lives very much aggrandized as a descendant of the Cid, glorying in his ancestorship.

He was very glad to see me again, he said, and to prove it came often to dine with us.