k struck, Eustace and I, who had been entertaining
the children in their mothers' absence, heard the sound of steps upon
the stairs. The guests arrived, bringing their own _risotto_ with
them. Welcome was short, if hearty. We sat down in carefully appointed
order, and fell into such conversation as the quarter of San Vio and
our several interests supplied. From time to time one of the matrons
left the table and descended to the kitchen, when a finishing stroke
was needed for roast pullet or stewed veal. The excuses they made
their host for supposed failure in the dishes, lent a certain grace
and comic charm to the commonplace of festivity. The entertainment
was theirs as much as mine; and they all seemed to enjoy what took the
form by degrees of curiously complicated hospitality. I do not think
a well-ordered supper at any _trattoria_, such as at first
suggested itself to my imagination, would have given any of us an
equal pleasure or an equal sense of freedom. The three children had
become the guests of the whole party. Little Attilio, propped upon an
air-cushion, which puzzled him exceedingly, ate through his supper and
drank his wine with solid satisfaction, opening the large brown eyes
beneath those tufts of clustering fair hair which promise much beauty
for him in his manhood. Francesco's boy, who is older and begins to
know the world, sat with a semi-suppressed grin upon his face, as
though the humour of the situation was not wholly hidden from him.
Little Teresa, too, was happy, except when her mother, a severe
Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid _fazzoletto_ of
crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon her for some supposed
infraction of good manners--_creanza_, as they vividly express it
here. Only Luigi looked a trifle bored. But Luigi has been a soldier,
and has now attained the supercilious superiority of young-manhood,
which smokes its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the
merits of the different cafes. The great business of the evening began
when the eating was over, and the decanters filled with new wine of
Mirano circulated freely. The four best singers of the party drew
together; and the rest prepared themselves to make suggestions, hum
tunes, and join with fitful effect in choruses. Antonio, who is a
powerful young fellow, with bronzed cheeks and a perfect tempest of
coal-black hair in flakes upon his forehead, has a most extraordinary
soprano--sound as a bell, strong as a trumpet, we